In 1995, Alison Hawthorne Deming set out to answer questions that had long been troubling her. By what do we measure our progress as a civilization? In the absence of vast frontiers, can we manage our ever-increasing numbers? How can we strike a balance with a natural world that we threaten by our very presence?To find answers, she visited and lived in some of the most remote regions of our continent -- southern Mexico, the Bay of Fundy, the uninhabited islands in the Sea of Cortez -- the edges of our crowded world. The result of her research is a beautifully written, honest, insightful, and thought provoking book. With the language of a poet and the eye of a scientist, Deming presents us with the difficult challenge of redefining our traditional notion of cultural progress and thinking of our future in new terms.