While I found his concepts very interesting and many of his stories beautiful in and of thesmelves, Nabhan fails to bring his book into a cohesive argument. He vaguely alludes to his concepts of the importance of biodiversity to cultures, and how a diversity of cultures promotes biodiversity, I felt as if I were drowning in nostalgia as he told this and that tale without making their significance clear and... significant.

There were interesting thoughts and stories, but as an entire book, it disappointed me.

Gary Nabhan's book has images in it that are complex and, judging by some of the reader's reviews, too fine-grained for some people's tastes. Like all great written works, Gary has taken the time not to oversimplify or over-generalize, but the resulting ambiguities and lack of forcing these essays into a pre-ordained thread has left me with images that will stick with me for a long time. They, like the ecosystems and cultures that he describes, point to a complexity which reveals itself slowly and over time--lifetimes, in some cases. It is this complexity that he celebrates and mourns the loss of as the cultures and languages that have evolved close to the land become increasingly diluted and discarded in the rush of assimilation that has overtaken so many cultures,languages and landscapes. His case for breathing life back into our landscapes THROUGH our culture and language is compelling, and a challenge to us all, wherever we live.

So few nature writers (Barry Lopez being one notable exception) are concerned with dissolving the artificial wall between humanity and nature. Nabhan takes this objective one step further by showing that biodiversity actually depends on the survival of human communities. In specific, human communities that have adapted to and depended upon natural systems for their own survival. For those who are interested in conservation, environmental science, human cultures, Native American societies, ethnobotany, archaeology, and anthropology, this book is a must-read.