While Peter Matthiessen's publications include several well-received novels, his reputation as a writer rests largely on his nonfiction nature books, which passionately yet scientifically document the often uneasy balance between human existence and the survival of wildlife and their habitats. For Matthiessen, the natural landscape cannot be extracted from the human world: the two are inextricably interwoven, and his nonfiction prose renders in remarkable poetic detail how the sociopolitical bears upon the ecological, as well as how ecological balance is an issue with sociopolitical import. Perhaps the most significant theme that is sustained throughout his writing life is that the survival of all forms of wildlife and the conservation of natural habitats are the only means of ensuring the survival of humanity. Therefore, the human and the natural worlds are so tightly bound together that the human cannot exist without the sustenance of the natural world.

Matthiessen's environmental...