An Almanac for Moderns contains a short essay for each day of the year that contemplates a unique but factual aspect of unbridled nature. According to a review in Nation, this collection of essays manages to "appeal to the ordinary lover of nature . . . but the turn of Peattie's mind is poetic and speculative." The New York Times calls this book "a fine and subtle perception . . . rising at times to an intense lyric beauty . . . a book which the reader will deeply treasure, and to which he will repeatedly return."