In the title essay of “Nature Matrix,” Robert Michael Pyle’s new collection of nonfiction pieces, he stresses that humans dwell within a rich network of connections—a matrix—that includes many other forms of earthly life. It’s a basic though easily overlooked truth, one that Mr. Pyle, a biologist who’s also written fiction and poetry along with books about butterflies, consistently affirms. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in one of this collection’s essays, “Secrets of the Talking Leaf,” in which the pages of books—“talking...

Source: Wall Street Journal October 23, 2020 16:07 UTC