An engrossing treat of a book... Crammed with hugely enjoyable anecdotes...You'll have a wonderful time reading these reminiscences

These essays offer the idiosyncrasy and curiosity value that we expect of good, narrative history, combined with much fine writing... Absorbing and persuasive in just the way good stories are

consistently enthralling memoirs by leading thinkers...the result is a remarkably dud-free collection

This is a book that bursts into life from the first page… Rousing, fascinating… Utterly engaging

This book is a sobering, riveting read: part quest, part travelogue, part scientific debate and part much-needed environmental call-to-arms

I loved this book. This is natural history at its funniest, most curious, enlightening and heartfelt. I couldn’t put it down. It was like going on safari with Gerald Durrell, Rachel Carson and Redmond O’ Hanlon … I was alternately wide-eyed with wonder, appalled and then tickled to laughter. It’s beautifully written. And it’s powerful. An elegy to every living thing on this remarkable planet. Impossible to finish without being uplifted by the wonder of the natural world and driven to do something about its plight.

A gloriously readable, boundlessly fascinating shaggy dog story about the author's quest for one of hte world's more recently extinct species...what makes this book so wonderful: using his eye for detail, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, teaching you to care about the little things.

delightfully written and a splendid romp through one man’s mole-hunting search among the wilds of animal taxonomy

At the heart of this delightfully meandering book is a history of how we find and catalogue species, and a thought-provoking examination of our changing attitudes to wildlife

Fascinating

Elegiac and personal… Highly recommended

A stirring tribute to the marvel of all living creatures

Entertaining and provocative

Exciting, breathless

[Girling] writes with verve and passion and he makes his case persuasively, with knowledge, enthusiasm and commitment… Brimful with facts and arguments

A thought-provoking study

A delight to read