When I first heard of this book and its title, I assumed it would be pretty wu-wu. What it turned out to be was a heart-felt memoir by a scientist about how they turned their intuition about the forest as a child into some nobel-prize-deserving discoveries.

The book opens with the most appetizing mouth-watering descriptions of dirt -- the "good" dirt is called humus, and the literary feat of making me feel like I missed out in my childhood for avoiding mushroomy loamy dirt allowed the author quite a bit of running room as she described her early years. Getting into the discoveries themselves and going up against a logging-industry intoxicated national service was wonderful.