Though this book would be filed under non-fiction, don't be fooled: this book is also poetry. Well-written, evocative sentences complement the broad scope of its tantalizing premise: what would the world look like if human beings disappeared from the face of the earth?

Here's a quick example of the soaring prosody you'll encounter in this book: "They return through a long, flat Civilian Control Zone valley carpeted with rice stubble. The soil is scored into herringbone furrows separated by glinting mirrors of early snowmelt that will re-freeze by nightfall. . . The sky is hatched with patterns echoing the ploughed geometrics below as lines of cranes soar in, joined by great airborne wedges of thousands of geese."

There is a sadness and anguish behind many of the topics of this book, but the author restrains himself from turning this into a mere environmentalist treatise by keeping his vision focused on the bigger picture (i.e. an unanthropormorphic universe). There is much to learn about human civilization in addition to natural processes here, as well as clues to how we can curb our destruction of our biosphere (hint: population control).

All in all, the clarity and phrasing of its writing take this book a step above.