E.O. Wilson to Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham to David Quammen - a collection of the best writing about one of the most inspiring, mysterious, and storied places on earth.  Call them Tropical Forests, Jungles, or Rainforests, these areas have always had a unique allure in the Western mind.

From Publishers Weekly
Katz, cofounder and executive director of the Rainforest Alliance, and Chapin, an actor and activist, have compiled an extraordinarily passionate anthology of fiction and nonfiction spanning centuries, continents and every form of jungle life-plant, animal, human. Each work in this multifarious collection of stories, essays and articles by renowned authors, explorers, biologists, environmentalists and just plain folk who've been inspired and transformed by their jungle expeditions is compelling. Classic fiction by Joseph Conrad and Peter Matthiessen, historical accounts of exploration and adventure and descriptions of flora and fauna are arranged into sections on explorers, their observations, "Adventure Gone Bad" and "Forests in Fiction." In pieces that are frightening, hilarious and often both, readers search for trunkback turtle nests and ancient ruins left by the cloud people, get a how-to lesson in head-shrinking and watch as a 50-foot long parade of ants makes its devastating march across the jungle floor. The collection ends with stirring observations by such rainforest champions as David Quammen and E.O. Wilson on the future of the ecosystem. Every page, like every step in the jungle, reveals exhilarating danger and great beauty. And just as the adventurers in these dynamic tales burn a crooked path into the jungle, their stories burn their way into the subconscious.