At Paste he tagged "five great nature books to get your mind off other things." One title on the list:
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger (2024)Read about the other entries on the list.
Communicating the latest advances in biology is often left to the scientists, but Zoë Schlanger proves that a good storyteller can make all those peer-reviewed papers and monotonous lab studies come alive for an interested reader. An environmental reporter by trade, she tackles a seemingly oxymoronic subject—plant intelligence—and completely changes the way you’ll look at our oxygen-producing, carbon-sequestering green friends.
However we define intelligence—communication, awareness of environment, memory, adaptability—Schlanger offers examples that we’re only beginning to understand, while still carefully resisting the temptation to anthropomorphize the Kingdom Plantae. Beautifully written and unexpectedly provocative, Schlanger’s book deserves all its accolades.
--Marshal Zeringue
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