Fascinating accounts of the greatest plants that ever lived.
An ingenious examination of old trees, mixing history, politics, and science.
Trees are simply big plants, but humans have long revered them, and bigger, older trees have been objects of worship. Farmer, a history professor and author of Trees in Paradise and On Zion’s Mount, adds that we often revere old trees better than old people. “Caring for elderflora does not track with eldercare,” he writes. “Because gnarled trees possess personhood without bodily mortality, and because they have oldness without elderliness, they elicit wonder and esteem, unlike hunched bodies of old people, objects of pity and contempt.” The author defines an “old” tree as one that has lived more than 1,000 years. Almost all are evergreen gymnosperms (“flowerless plants with naked seeds”) as opposed to angiosperms (“flowering plants with fruits”). Farmer’s examples—cedar, olive, ginkgo, fig, baobab—have enormous capacity to recover from catastrophic damage. “At the organismal level,” writes the author, “they do not senesce, meaning they don’t lose vitality with age. In theory, such a plant is internally capable of immortality.” Death comes via an external force: wind, flood, disease, and, increasingly, humans. By the 18th-century, most Western cultures no longer worshiped trees but grew fascinated by those of great age and historical symbolism. Farmer devotes much of the narrative to the scientists who study them and the ongoing efforts of naturalists and Indigenous people to reconcile industrial capitalism with forest preservation. Nature lovers will relish the author’s stories, if not his conclusion. Tree cover is expanding across the planet but mostly through monoculture plantations of young, commercially useful trees. Humans continue to cut down old-growth forests. Farmer notes that we wonder what it was like for our ancestors to live among mastodons and other giant animals. Our descendants may wonder how it felt to experience “mammoth and millennial trees.”
Fascinating accounts of the greatest plants that ever lived.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-465-09784-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.
A celebration of animal companions, mammalian, reptilian, avian, and otherwise.
The Ulysses S. Cat of NPR commentator Simon’s title was a “chunky orange Scottish Fold with endearing floppy ears and a broad, flat face that looked…as if he had been running full steam after a mouse when a door opened and…splat!” He may not have been the most photogenic of critters, but he was a steadfast companion to Simon’s mother and stepfather as the latter suffered illness and death. Other creatures populate Simon’s pages: a betta named Salman Fishdie, a grasshopper named Hoppy, many dogs and cats. Simon ranges widely to collect his stories; among the most affecting is a portrait of the people of Sarajevo under siege by Serbian forces, punctuated by an impatient colleague’s saying to Simon, “I do not want to get shot while doing a fucking pet story.” A good point, that, but Simon is emboldened and moved by the Sarajevans’ and U.N. soldiers’ care for pets displaced from their homes. “In making room for animals at the lowest times of their lives,” he writes, “Sarajevo showed the world real humanitarian aid.” In a somewhat lighter turn, Simon voices the hope that the afterlife will involve meeting again with all the animals and people we have loved, with no hard distinction drawn between birds, dogs, cats, turtles, and other beloved animal companions and other members of one’s family, biological and elective. While recognizing that animals make us better humans, holding unconditional love but eschewing grudges, Simon also decries the misuse of animals, particularly in laboratory settings where other modeling methods can be used that do not visit pain and death on such creatures as chimpanzees and white rats. Writes Simon, meaningfully, “Someday, I’m pretty sure we’ll look back on our use of animals in this way as something brutal.” Amen.
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781324117186
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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