Named one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker, TIME, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Boston Globe, Scientific American, New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon, The Light Eaters by award winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger is a groundbreaking exploration of plant intelligence and the hidden life of the botanical world. Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize, and a finalist for both the Chautauqua and Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, this National Outdoor Book Award winner reveals the astonishing creativity and agency of plants, their ability to communicate, recognize kin, hear sounds, remember, and even deceive. Through vivid storytelling and immersive reporting, Schlanger challenges our assumptions about consciousness and intelligence, inviting readers to reconsider the role of plants, and ourselves, within the living world. Praised as “a masterpiece of science writing” by Robin Wall Kimmerer and “mesmerizing, world expanding, and achingly beautiful” by Ed Yong, The Light Eaters illuminates the wonder and wisdom of the green beings that sustain life on Earth.
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