Advance Praise For Tough Little Beauties:

“Stephanie Mills has always been on the cutting edge and Tough Little Beauties bears out her obvious position as one of our leading social critics.”
     —Jim Harrison, author, Returning to Earth and Saving Daylight

“Stephanie Mills speaks her mind as a woman who expects the best of human community, never dulling her keen awareness of the worst. Her love of language, wit, and amiable narrative voice make her an essential guide to what it means to live a life of conscience.”
     —Alison Hawthorne Deming, author, Genius Loci and Writing the Sacred into the Real

“Stephanie Mills’s words shine like light on rushing rivers, and her insights endure long after reading her essays.”
     —Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, author, Animals in the House and The Power of Words

“The times have finally caught up with Stephanie Mills. As nature is no longer allowing humanity to deny that it is part of ecology, we need Stephanie Mills’s smart, personal, deeply spiritual writings on the relationship between humans and the more-than-human as never before.”
     —Freeman House, author, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species

“No matter where thinker Stephanie Mills takes us, her vow to the Earth is the bed of coals constantly burning in the heart of this book. Mills journeys easily between the real landscapes of the Earth and the inner ones of intellect and emotion. Always she is unflinchingly honest.”
     —Janisse Ray, author, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

“There is no more thoughtful, observant, insightful, uplifting, and elegant writer in the English language than Stephanie Mills. Whether she is speaking of intricacies in nature, her personal travels and experiences, on the difficulties of the human/political  ondition, she lets the world in whole, brings forth meanings that are always unique, keen, deft, and often very funny. She is a classicist as a writer, an activist in spirit, ready to confront the juggernaut with considerable ferocity. Tough Little Beauties rewards the reader with insight into the difficulties we face as well as joy at the glory of it all.”
     —Jerry Mander, author, In the Absence of the Sacred

“Tough Little Beauties is a compendium of brilliant work spanning over twenty years. The collection contains essays not seen before in book form and reprinted work, including a fascinating journal of journeying in India and a healthy excerpt from the wonderful book In Praise of Nature. Whether readers are familiar or not with Stephanie Mills’ writing they’ll be happy to discover (or rediscover) a sizzling writer, firm in her beliefs, yet ceaselessly alert and questioning. The moral core of this book is thoughtful and solid, while its subjects take an impressive run through the likes of the relationship of humans to nature, techno-fantasy, parenting vs. not parenting, fatality and fetality, apocalypse, herpes, and Mother Teresa.”
     —John Keeble, author, Nocturnal America & Yellowfish