Starred Review, From Publishers Weekly:

With his usual eloquence, patience and humor, Wilson, our modern-day Thoreau, adds his thoughts to the ongoing conversation between science and religion. Couched in the form of letters to a Southern Baptist pastor, the Pulitzer Prize–winning entomologist pleads for the salvation of biodiversity, arguing that both secular humanists like himself and believers in God acknowledge the glory of nature and can work together to save it. The "depth and complexity of living Nature still exceeds human imagination," he asserts (somewhere between 1.5 million and 1.8 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms have been discovered to date), and most of the world around us remains unknowable, as does God. Each species functions as a self-contained universe with its own evolutionary history, its own genetic structure and its own ecological role. Human life is tangled inextricably in this intricate and fragile web. Understanding these small universes, Wilson says, can foster human life.

Wilson convincingly demonstrates that such rich diversity offers a compelling moral argument from biology for preserving the "Creation." Wilson passionately leads us by the hand into an amazing and abundantly diverse natural order, singing its wonders and its beauty and captivating our hearts and imaginations with nature's mysterious ways.

From Booklist:

Famed entomologist, humanist thinker, and cogent writer Wilson issues a forthright call for unity between religion and science in order to save the "creation," or living nature, which is in "deep trouble." Addressing his commonsensical yet ardent discourse to "Dear Pastor," he asks why religious leaders haven't made protecting the creation part of their mission.

Forget about life's origins, Wilson suggests, and focus on the fact that while nature achieves "sustainability through complexity," human activities are driving myriad species into extinction, thus depleting the biosphere and jeopardizing civilization. Wilson celebrates individual species, each a "masterpiece of biology," and acutely analyzes the nexus between nature and the human psyche.

In the book's frankest passages, he neatly refutes fantasies about humanity's ability to re-create nature's intricate web, and deplores the use of religious belief (God will take care of it) as an impediment to conservation. Wilson's eloquent defense of nature, insights into our resistance to environmental preservation, and praise of scientific inquiry coalesce in a blueprint for a renaissance in biology reminiscent of the technological advances engendered by the space race.