There's some really interesting stuff in here, but I can't honestly say that it does what it says on the tin - the book's a little muddled, as if it doesn't quite know what it wants to be.

The subtitle, The Story and Science of Migration, is true for the first third of the book. It's a fascinating look at how scientists learned about migration, primarily through the lens of experiments on various animals. This is the type of thing that really appeals to me - not just knowing how or why, but understanding the process by which that how or why is obtained. Then migration gets dropped almost entirely: the second third is more about how various animals construct their homes, from birds to beavers to termites. Again, really interesting, and if it's moved away from the title it's still solidly a pop science book.

Then comes the final third, where the whole thing turns into a memoir, with chapter after chapter of Heinrich pottering about on his farm, or going deer hunting, or pondering the use of fire and how it, over the course of human history, contributed to the development of home. The experiments, and to a lesser extent the science, drops out entirely, and it's more straight nature writing than pop science, in that it primarily explores Heinrich's relationship with his own home. I'm not criticising the writing - I genuinely enjoyed reading this section. I could have read a whole book like this from him! But it's not the book I started reading, and I can't help but think that - interesting as the separate parts are - the book as a whole veered off track, and never really had a solid sense of its own identity.