Mowat is probably best known for "Never Cry Wolf" and "A Whale for the Killing," two accounts of his close personal involvement with these maligned and abused animals, written long before their cause became fashionable. His is a "world" of tundra and outcrop rock, a place where "only the disembodied whistling of an unseen plover gave any indication that life existed anywhere in this lunar land where no tree grew." Like the scenes before him, his writing is lean, evocative, haunting. And beneath his "achromatic landscapes," Mowat uncovers surprise, complexity, magnificence….

In such a world, nature can seem sublimely inhuman, vast, terrible. Yet Mowat avoids either sentimental falsification of its harshness or the opposite fallacy of denying any feeling whatsoever for nature. His understanding encompasses both the beauty and necessities of the natural world, and his work seems more trustworthy for recording both.

Another aspect of Mowat's truthfulness...