An eclectic and fascinating collection that will leave readers wanting more from this appealing guide to the world’s flora.
A collection of stories about the interconnections between humans and the plant world.
In his latest, plant neurobiologist Mancuso, author of The Incredible Journey of Plants and The Revolutionary Genius of Plants, continues his exploration of our relationships with plants. “After decades of keeping community with plants,” he writes, “I seem to perceive their presence not only in every place on our planet but also in the stories of each and every one of us.” As in his previous books, the author expertly combines his accessible style with pertinent scientific data. Following an encounter with an adversary in book collecting, Mancuso shares the story he learned regarding “liberty trees,” which were planted throughout France during the French Revolution, with inspiration from the American Revolution. Mancuso explains how planting trees in cities today can help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that the rural-urban reversal has produced and how red spruce became the wood of choice for violinmaker Antonio Stradivari. The author shares how studying the growth rings of trees in the American Southwest has allowed us to decipher climate trends of the past and to accurately date the Aztec ruins of New Mexico. Further, he explains how dendrochronology led to the unnecessary and unfortunate demise of Prometheus, the nearly 5,000-year-old pine tree considered the oldest living being on Earth. Mancuso also explains how a wooden ladder used in the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby led to the birth of forensic botany. In his quest for the origin of the idea that banana peels are slippery, Mancuso unearths the source of the 1967 hoax regarding the psychedelic effects of bananas. Finally, the author discusses the little-known planting of “moon trees” around the U.S. in 1976 to celebrate the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence.
An eclectic and fascinating collection that will leave readers wanting more from this appealing guide to the world’s flora.Pub Date: April 18, 2023
ISBN: 9781635422566
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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