In the hands of award-winning writer Scott Russell Sanders, the essaybecomes an inquisitive, versatile, and revelatory form of art. Sanders uses theessay as a means to examine his life – his Midwestern background, his father'sdrinking, his resistance to war, his literary debts, and his feeling for wildness –and to address such common human questions as What is a good life? How do family andculture shape a person’s character? What is our place in nature? In other essays, Sanders tackles hot-button issues such as the destabilization of Earth’s climate, the environmental degradation of the planet, the unchecked growth of technology, themystique of money, and the dangers of globalization. Readers and writers alike willfind wisdom and inspiration in Sanders’s luminous and thought-provokingprose.