Is painting the same oak tree in a field in Essex, England dozens of times over a period of three years in extremes of weatherand light an act of artistic obsession, or an exercise in truly learning to see, to understand nature in its greatest detail, or just plain nuts? This is one of the many questions raised by Oak, a collection of paintings painstakingly created by British artist Stephen Taylor, whose single-minded pursuit was made famous in Alain de Botton s book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (Pantheon, 2009). Other than gallery shows in Cambridge and London, two small self-published catalogs, and a website, http://www.stephentaylorpaintings.com/paintings/oaks.aspx, these exquisitely detailed paintings have never been collected in book format. The result is a book that is both a meditation on nature and a tour-de-force of artistic technique.