Mark Kurlansky

A fascinating book about a fish and man's involvement with what was once one of the world's most plentiful foodstuffs. The book shows us what we can lose when we treat the environment so badly.

Fly fishing, historian Mark Kurlansky has found, is a battle of wits, fly fisher vs. fish - and the fly fisher does not always (or often) win. The targets are highly intelligent, wily, strong, and athletic animals. The allure, Kurlansky learns, is that fly fishing makes catching a fish as difficult as possible. There is an art, too, in the crafting of flies. Beautiful and intricate, some are made with more than two dozen pieces of feather and fur from a wide range of animals.

The Unreasonable Virtue of Fly Fishing marries Kurlansky's signature wide-ranging reach with a subject that has captivated him for a lifetime - combining history, craft, and personal memoir to show readers, devotees of the sport or not, the necessity of experiencing nature's balm first-hand.