This is an excellent, accessible summary of the thorough and extremely important research done by Scott Atran, Douglas Medin, and their associates over the last many years. They have studied the ways people classify things, and have compared the Anglo-Americans of the Midwestern US with the Menomini people of Wisconsin and the Itza' Maya of Guatemala. Of course, the Menomini and Itza' know more about local plants and animals than urban Americans do, but even in comparison with outdoor and rural Americans there are key differences: the indigenous people have a more religious or spiritual association with nonhuman lives, a deeper sense of ecological relationships, and a more comprehensive view of how humans can and do interact with those other