pThis is Ken Ring's last book, and though he claims to spend most of his days whimpering, his farewell to writing, as his final essays will demonstrate, certainly goes out with a bang. As he veers unsteadily toward eighty-seven, Ring has lost none of his verve or literary panache. As always, his essays sparkle with his usual wit, but mainly reflect Ring's more serious concern to address some of the topics that have engaged him during this last phase of his life.ppbrppStill, the book begins in a more lighthearted way with his reminiscing about his early life with his absent father my father, once removed, he calls him and about some of the other things that shaped his character, such as the greatest movie ever made that few people have heard of. He also devotes several essays to largely unknown facets of Helen Keller's extraordinary career, including The Sex Life of a Saint. But most of the rest of the book is devoted to Ring's careful study of the lives of animals and considerations of