WITH EVERY GREAT BREATH

Amiable tales from a natural-born storyteller.

In his latest, the prolific writer and passionate environmental activist gathers wide-ranging, previously published essays, along with a few new ones. Bass, the author of more than 30 books, begins with a rather tepid piece on fighting fires, which he did once with a friend, exploring how it heightens the senses and “altered” his friend. Then it’s on to a profile of Fred Hatfield, “Dr. Squat,” informed by the author’s own experiences with weightlifting. Bass discusses the film Cracking the Humpback Code, a “work of luminous mystery and reverence,” chronicling his time with the director in Maui swimming with singing whales in the “most bottomless blue imaginable.” Next up is an account of the author’s ice-fishing trip in Montana with his daughter and a good friend. A 2010 piece on the Deepwater Horizon’s “toxic gush into the heart of the Gulf” is rife with anger and emotional devastation, but he’s much more positive in his reverential essay on the larch tree, “every bit as glorious in life as in death.” Bass is thrilled by the return of the wolves to Yellowstone—“It’s all more tangled and wonderful than we may ever know”—and he’s typically enthusiastic about his trip to the Galápagos, where he swam with the whale shark, “not a whale, not a mammal, just a cold-blooded gilled thing, a giant.” After a discursive ode on the moon, the author returns to familiar territory with an admiring paean to the African elephant and an energetic piece on an Alaskan polar bear. Whether it’s a lamentation for his many dead dogs or a new, insightful piece on how Hemingway’s hunting and fishing helped shape his writing, the congenial Bass always delights.

Readers will enjoy dipping in and out of thoughtful, heartfelt essays oozing with sentiment and affability.