MEADOWLAND By John Lewis-Stempel

What really goes on in the long grass? Nature writer and farmer John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons in an English meadow, from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of summer and grazing in autumn, and intimately explores the lives of the animals that inhabit the grass and the soil beneath, as rich as any human biography: the badger clan, the fox family, the rabbit warren, the skylark brood and the curlew pair, among others. The stories of their births, lives, and deaths thread through the book from first page to last.