"The East Country, like all accomplished works of close ecological focus, moves cleverly between the intensely local and the universal. Jules Pretty unites his two distinguished careers—as a biologist and as a writer in the broad fields of nature, place and landscape—to encourage 'long attachments to the local' as profoundly valuable undertakings."—Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways and Landmarks

"The East Country is a marvelous book. There is something mystical about it, coming perhaps from the sense of reverence that Jules Pretty accords the natural world. It gives the sense of a prose poem, a song of praise for a world that is vanishing."—Astrid E. J. Ogilvie, coeditor of The Iceberg in the Mist