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A mostly wonderful book, but somewhat uneven.

This was primarily a tribute to the author's father, who did have an amazing life. Having started as an aristocrat in pre-war eastern Germany, he was one of the daring pilots (on the losing German side) in World War One. Because Germany lost, his estate ended up in Poland� and then back in Germany during World War II, only to end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain after WWII.

That stripped away the wealth of his aristocracy, and he became a scientists� of sorts. That is one of the themes of the book, ultimately. What he did was science when he started, but as more was learned, science itself evolved, and his passion became sidelined and lost a lot of respect. And he spent his last decades as an embittered and somewhat impoverished loner.

Our author struggles with that, since he still saw the value in what his father had pursued, but at the same time was quite the modern scientist himself. The last chapters of the book delve into his sometimes tortured thinking about that. I think that was a weak way of ending the book; ideally, this should have been worked into the meat of the story, not left to become a rather pedantic and long postscript.

The author’s own life is an entwined albeit secondary, story. His adventures as a child and a teenager were magical, and are amazing to read. (The closest book to this I've read is William O. Douglas� autobiographical Of Men and Mountains.)

I enjoyed his Mind of the Raven more, frankly, but I’m glad I read this. I plan on diving into his Ravens in Winter soon.