"From his green awakening as a young boy, collecting butterflies and beetles, to his leadership of the famed Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter Raven tells the extraordinary story of his encounter with plants and other organisms. An incredible life journey takes him from Madagascar to China and countless places in between as he searches to understand the diverse species that form our web of life. In clear and understandable prose, Raven shows the beauty and complexity of nature and the tragedy of its mass extinctions. It is a human story that also carries a timely warning."

Jerry Brown, former governor of California

"Pull up a chair for a front row seat to the birth of humanity’s realization that our future is dependent on a fragile and finite biosphere and to the story of the farsighted science leader who turned a Midwestern U.S. botanical garden into a global institution for environmental sustainability."

Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences

"This book recounts in fascinating detail the ways in which his long, varied life and deeply inquisitive mind have allowed Peter Raven to contribute so  much, both to his colleagues and to science generally.”

Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, authors of The Population Bomb

“The book’s range is wide for a text that is only about 350 pages. . .  Throughout the autobiography, Raven recounts in straightforward prose a history of developments, donors and doers. . . . For a St. Louis reader, the book is a reminder of how the botanical garden evolved over the decades.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch