The Paradise of All These Parts

Praise

Hands-on and eloquent-a lover’s rhapsody.—Edward Hoagland

“A wonderful piece of work: lively, thought-provoking, and totally absorbing. The city of Boston has been chopped to pieces, riddled with tunnels, and surrounded by fill, but as Mitchell reveals in The Paradise of All These Parts, it is still a place of wonder.”—Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea

“Like Thoreau, Mitchell has a genius for sauntering, and I can’t imagine a better rambling companion.”—David Gessner, author of Sick of Nature and Soaring with Fidel

“You don’t have to know Boston to appreciate the stories Mitchell is relating, for despite his local slant, his approach has global implications.”—Laurence Marschall, Natural History

“…This may well be the finest book about the town as a place, highly personal and at the same time keenly descriptive.”—Michael Kenney, Boston Globe

“Like Vladimir Nabokov, John Hanson Mitchell is a writer with an eye for nature’s curious details, rather than a naturalist who practices writing. His new natural history of Boston is actually more a history of naturalists, explorers, conservationists and others at play on nature’s grand stage with lots of juicy subplots and a large cast of engaging eccentrics. Irresistible.”—Christopher W. Leahy, chair of the Massachusetts Audubon Society and author of The Birdwatcher’s Companion to North American Birdlife