A risky gamble: repackage twenty-plus years of articles written for NatGeo, add a one-or-two-page intro and followup to each, and publish ... but without photos. I think it mostly worked. It kept the focus on conservation, fascinatingly bracketed by its two siblings, exploration and restoration.

Quammen writes about the boundaries. Where humans and nonhumans interact, it tends not to go well for the latter. It doesn’t have to be that way. When possible, he writes about exploration: learning about little-known wildernesses while they still exist. At the other extreme, he includes a few examples of restoration: through education and unimaginable devotion, some near-catastrophes can be averted. Maybe. “It’s late, but it’s not too late,” he writes in his Afterword. I like to think so too, and am moved by his cautious and honest optimism. I intend to give a copies of this book to someone or someones young.