Reviewing Richard K. Nelson's Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America (1997) for The New York Times Book Review (30 November 1997), Robert Finch observed, "Nelson, more than any writer I know, has actually attempted to live out this Native American worldview." Having studied the lives of Arctic Eskimos and Native Americans in Alaska for about twenty-five years and written anthropological and ethnographic monographs, Nelson's nature writing has emerged from his scientific knowledge of their cultures and from his active participation in their lifeways, revealing his profound engagement with his subjects and his respect for their points of view.

Richard King Nelson was born on 1 December 1941 in Madison, Wisconsin, to Robert King Nelson, a state employee, and Florence Olson Nelson. In 1959 Richard Nelson enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, planning to major in zoology, but he soon found that he was more interested in a broad view of people...