Brilliantly written, supremely intelligent, and philosophically provocative.
A multiplicity of ways of looking at trees.
Moor, the author of On Trails (2016), was inspired to write this arboreal meditation after his husband, Remi, suffered a stroke. Seeing an image of neurons took the author to unexpected branches of thought about the variegated shades of meaning, concrete and metaphorical, behind the idea of a “tree.” American by birth, Moor and his husband (who returned to health), live in British Columbia, where forest fires have complicated the benign associations that Moor had of trees going back to a childhood spent climbing them and reading stories extolling their benevolence. Moor ruminates on these memories and on his prodigious reading as he travels to the Lake District in England, the redwood forests of California, the workshops of bonsai artists in Japan, the rainforests of Tanzania, and spots closer to home to explore with local experts the human (and hominid) relationships, dark and light, with these mysterious, ancient life forms. On one journey across the American South with recently discovered cousins of his family tree branching off from the probable rape of an enslaved matriarch, Moor reckons with the use of trees as the sites of thousands of lynchings during Jim Crow. In a Papuan forest, his childhood illusions about the idyllic-seeming treehouses of Korowai hunter-gatherers collide with the reality that global capitalism has turned their culture into a theme park for ecotourists. Moor writes, “there is something, which, in our tendency to focus solely on the sunny side of arborescence, we too often overlook: A tree is a way of persisting in a world of wounds....it seems incredible that trees have managed to survive at all. And yet, certain old trees have remained standing for millennia, while empires crest and crash in their shade.”
Brilliantly written, supremely intelligent, and philosophically provocative.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781476739250
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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