Hailed as a Thoreau for the twenty-first century , MacArthur Fellow Carl Safina takes us on a tour of the natural world in the course of a year spent divided between his home on the shore of eastern Long Island and on his travels to the four points of the compass. As he witnesses a natural year in an unnatural world he shows how the problems of the environment are linked to questions of social justice and the politics of greed, and in asking difficult questions about our finite world, his answers provide hope.