This delightful anthology features pieces by some of the best authors of the twentieth century, such as Italo Calvino, Bruce Chatwin, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, John Fowles, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Cormac McCarthy, David Malouf, and many more. A vivid and wide-ranging collection, it addresses its mammoth subject with wit, originality and wisdom. In a time when man's relationship to nature is so warped that we often do not know where the food we eat has come from, or even, sometimes, what it is, this is a joyful and intelligent re-examination of our place in the natural world.