Trees don’t just stand there, Simard convincingly argues, but perceive, respond, connect, and converse.
One of the world’s leading forest ecologists recounts her lifelong experimentation with tree-to-tree communication.
In this memoir/scientific exploration, Simard tells the fascinating story that led Richard Powers to base a character on her in his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Overstory. Simard focuses on her work probing the nature of forest society and how the constellation of various species tree hubs (in particular, “mother trees”) interacts with mycorrhizal (fungal) links to send chemical signals to each other. When she started in the early 1980s, this type of thinking was dismissed as New Age–y and nonscientific. However, growing up in the woods of western Canada, the author had practical experience studying the rejuvenation of clear-cuts, and she thought there was likely more going on with the trees, a complex and interconnected force that clear-cutting and subsequent monocultural reseeding was missing. Simard charts her yearslong inquiry into the underground wiring of trees, among a variety of species, as it advanced alongside the growth of her own family. These parallel, intimate stories are equally absorbing, and the author’s descriptions of the science involved in her pioneering research are consistently engaging. “Plants use their neural-like physiology to perceive their environment,” she writes. “Their leaves, stems, and roots sense and comprehend their surroundings, then alter their physiology—their growth, ability to forage for nutrients, photosynthetic rates, and closure rates of stomata for saving water.” The author is candid about the sexism she has confronted throughout her career as well as the academic beard-pulling over the originality of her scientific results—e.g., her early recognition of the effects of climate change or the “kin recognition from Mother Trees.” Though some readers may not appreciate Simard’s frequent anthropomorphism, the science is solid, and the author’s overarching theme of stewardship is clear, understandable, and necessary.
Trees don’t just stand there, Simard convincingly argues, but perceive, respond, connect, and converse.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-65609-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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