Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career--both his successes and his failures--and his motivations for becoming a biologist.

Profiles soft-spoken Southerner E.O. Wilson, a naturalist renowned for his scientific study of ants that led to his 1975 book Sociobiology : the new synthesis, where he put forth the notion that evolutionary principles could explain social behavior throughout the animal kingdom, including in humans. Shows the evolution of sociobiology from a controversial new discipline to one supported by experimental science that has shown that genes do play a role...