Readers of Matthiessen's novels will find further expansions on his key concerns and beliefs in his nonfiction.

The questions of cultural relativity raised in At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Far Tortuga find their echoes in such works as Under the Mountain Wall (1962) and The Cloud Forest (1961). His passionate championing of oppressed minorities manifests itself in Indian Country (1984), Men's Lives (1991), and elsewhere. And his deep attachment and dedication to the beauty and mystery of nature are evidenced everywhere. Perhaps the most thorough immersion in Matthiessen's world can be gained from The Snow Leopard, where he chronicles, in journal form, his pilgrimage to the Crystal Monastery in Nepal in 1973. While it offers the record of the sights and sounds of that journey, it also contains Matthiessen's reassessment of his values and beliefs in the wake of his wife's painful death from cancer, his meditations...