Caroline Tisdall is one of the foremost experts on the artist Joseph Beuys, and this book represents both the culmination of thirty years of scholarship -- including fifteen years of close collaboration with the artist himself -- as well as the long awaited follow-up to her acclaimed monograph on Beuys for the 1979 Guggenheim retrospective she curated. The book`s title refers to a phrase Beuys used repeatedly in his collaborations with Tisdall, and suggests a way forward through the often daunting complexity of Beuys`s philosophy and art. Tisdall`s formidable knowledge of her subject leads the reader through such diverse topics as Beuys`s relationship to ecology, politics, shamanism, alchemy, botany, literature, economics, philosophy, and psychology. Tisdall`s observations on Beuys`s art reach a poetic simplicity rarely achieved in art criticism -- all the more remarkable given the multi-layered nature of this art. This book`s text is complemented by more than 300 of Tisdall`s own photographs, many of them previously unpublished.