"The Nature of Generosity continues the story of Hole in the Sky, the memoir of Kittredge's early life on his family's vast ranch in Oregon; but it also ranges freely around the world and through recorded time". "A travel book of sorts - from New York and Venice to the Andalusian hills of Garcia Lorca, from the cow towns of Montana to the caves at Lascaux - it is driven by the quest to reconcile childhood simplicities with the complex, urgent, adult questions about 'who to be, and how, and why. Drawing on our various histories - biological, cultural, psychological - Kittredge celebrates diversity as the cornerstone of our social possibilities, examines the freedom and responsibility this entails, and suggests that our culture's habitually selfish, combative behavior is far from being in our best interests - or indeed, in our nature."--BOOK JACKET.