Keith County Journal

To learn from nature, not about nature, was the imperative that took John Janovy Jr. and his students into the sandhills, marshes, grasslands, canyons, lakes, and streams of Keith County in western Nebraska. The biologist explores the web of interrelationships among land, animals, and human beings. Even termites, snails, and barn swallows earn respect and assume significance in the overall scheme of things. Janovy, reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau in his acute powers of observation and search for wisdom, has written a new foreword for this Bison Books edition.

"Good biologist though [Janovy] is, he's an even better nature writer, with a special affinity for the mysterious and the mystic."—Noel Perrin, "Keith County Journal has already invited comparison with such lapidary works as Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The book belongs in that com-pany. Like Blake seeing a world in a grain of sand, Professor Janovy discerns universes in the creeks, bogs and fields of the Sandhills country. He makes the reader care for creatures as large as the great blue heron, as small as the inch-long plains killifish. . . . [A] jewel of a journal."—Time, "A gracefully written, horizon-expanding book."—New York Times Book Review, "A very different look at the wonders of nature, fascinating, well written, and enlightening."—Library Journal

John Janovy Jr. is Varner Professor at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and director of the Cedar Point Biological Station. He is the author of Back in Keith County and On Becoming a Biologist, also available as Bison Books.