Before the Echo: Essays on Nature

"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game."

In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural...