"Like our best nature writers, [Harrigan] tells us not only what's out there, but connects it to our everyday lives.... A Natural State is recommended reading not just for Texans but for all who would explore their connections to the natural world."

—Washington Post

"The personal essay at its best. What Edward Abbey did for the desert Southwest and what E. B. White did for Maine, Harrigan has done for Texas; quite simply, he is just as good."

—Houston Chronicle

"Harrigan tests the validity of [his] love of place in a series of essays about the Texas that does not appear on the television show 'Dallas' or in the pages of the Neiman-Marcus catalogue. And he finds a place of remarkable natural variety and peculiar beauty. A place worth loving."

—Outside

In this remarkable collection of essays, Stephen Harrigan explores, with an unfailing depth of feeling, the human longing to feel at home in the world of nature. In vivid and convincing prose, he evokes the landscape of his home territory, Texas, and his own reactions, sometimes droll, sometimes haunted, to the extraordinary power of place that Texas projects.