Reading "Bones of the Earth" is a little like archaeology. Each essay is a rare find: an exciting bit of history, a revelation about how a forgotten culture operated, an interview with someone unexpected. To fully understand this book, one needs to use the brain, to arrange the pieces together in a way that reveals a bigger picture, a personal insight. Author Howard Mansfield intends you to find that insight for yourself.

"A good story should linger with a reader," he said in an interview with The Wire. "Ideally, there should be an after-effect, the 'shock of recognition,' as Edmund Wilson called it, or-if you'll pardon an overused word-an epiphany."

"Bones of the Earth" is a collection of essays and interviews and seemingly found news items grouped into chapters and sections. Even more so than Mansfield's previous work, this book forgoes conclusion on the author's part. Mansfield centered his outstanding "The Same Ax, Twice," around the proposition that an ax-or a town-remade over and over is more important than one replaced. But "Bones of the Earth" is more a scientific study of emotion, of longing and sadness over what is lost and joy at what somehow, almost impossibly, remains. There is very little telling the reader what the clues mean, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation and involvement.

How does one research a topic like the lone, giant elm tree on a main street in Hillsboro, N.H., or why stone bridges from the early 19th century are not all well crafted? For Mansfield, it seems, life is research. "I spend years thinking about something, trying to figure out why I think it's interesting or upsetting. I test myself by asking if the opposite of what I believe is true, and I follow my curiosity," he said.

There are plenty of interesting tidbits and curious facts throughout the book to keep the pages turning. But it is the bigger picture, the epiphany, that makes this book great. Time and again, people fail to recognize the miraculous natural world around them. Writers and naturalists do their best to point this out. Rachel Carson wrote about the brilliant display of stars on a New England lakeshore in "The Sense of Wonder":

"It can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead: and because they could see it almost any night perhaps they will never see it."

Howard Mansfield sees it, and he's doing all he can to show it to all of us. But is it working? Are we learning the lessons of our past here in the Granite State?

"We have been given one last chance to preserve this beautiful state," Mansfield said. "In the 19th century, almost every economic arrangement failed in New England--most farming, textile mills, etc.--and in this failure New England has found opportunities.

"Failure bestows a second chance. Economic stagnation preserved much of what we love of Boston, for example, saving Back Bay, Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods. Boston's essential cityscape--its Bostonness--survived to be appreciated and protected. The same lessons can be applied to much of New Hampshire."

Looking around, it's hard to say if the state has been successful on a year-to-year basis

"I think that it's a draw." Mansfield said. "We are torn between dual loyalties--between promoting business on the one hand and preserving the qualities we know to be New Hampshire's-small towns, open space and an independent spirit that prizes civic action. So some years we have LCHIP money and we fund dozens of worthy projects, and some years we spend nothing. Sometimes the Department of Transportation builds a road sensitive to the landscape and sometimes not. The short answer is that there is initiative for preservation in almost every town.

"New Hampshire is the sixth wealthiest state in the nation (in terms of personal income), but we talk as if we were poor. We need the kind of vision and determination that created the White Mountains National Forest."

And we need people to dig into our past and show that we once knew these truths but have maybe forgotten a little. Maybe a lot. "Bones of the Earth" is the chronicle of one man finding the wonders of the commonplace and revealing the crass obfuscation of what's important by modern commercial excess. Buy this book to start remembering. Consider it a first step to helping the world be a better place.