Knopp's first collection of nature essays offer 16 pieces filled with the evidence not only of books but also of the eyes, ears, nose and taste buds to give a multidimensional view of nature. `These are essays in the best and truest sense, assays, distillations, at once learned and personal. Lisa Knopp vividly demonstrates how encounters with the mundane details of nature - a mole's nose, the shell of a turtle, the tail of an opossum - can yield a richer and deeper life. She teaches us, by her own patient and enquiring example, how to see. This is the freshest and brightest collection of natural history essays I have read in many years' - Paul Guchow.