Sagar asks: How are we - as a species living what we think is a civilised life - to survive? How do we continue to live in an overcrowded world whose finite resources are being rapidly exhausted and whose biological support systems are close to breakdown? There is a wide-spread and fast-growing belief that tinkering with economics and local conservation measures are not enough; that what is needed is a revolution in our consciousness regarding our place in the natural world and our responsibilities towards it. Science and religion are often referred to - but very rarely is there any mention of literature. Sagar attempts to reassert the essential relationship between imagination, nature and human survival. By close readings of major works by seventeen of the greatest writers (from Homer to Hughes) that literature has a central contribution to make in our efforts to discover the laws of nature and human nature, and to live within them.