
In THE SONGS OF TREES, award-winning nature writer David Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees around the world, exploring the trees' connections with webs of fungi, bacterial communities, cooperative and destructive animals, and other plants. In doing this he shows that every living being is not only sustained by biological connections, but is made from these relationships, and that holding a networked view of life enriches our understanding of biology, human nature, and ethics.
Publisher:
New York, New York : Viking, [2017]
Copyright Date:
©2017
ISBN:
9780525427520
052542752X
052542752X
Branch Call Number:
577.3 HAS
Characteristics:
xi, 292 pages



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Add a CommentIt is fitting that Haskell references Baker’s "The Peregrine" in this book as his poetic prose has the same visceral impact on the reader’s senses. He has a gift for capturing the sounds of nature in onomatopoeic words. (I found myself listening to the winter forest in a different way, the swish of white pine and the rattle of red oak leaves in the damp east wind.) But more than this, Haskell is an extraordinary writer and philosopher. He is a keen observer of nature, which is not a separate entity from humanity, but part of a whole where we “unself”. His essays on trees in cities, Denver and New York, are the most powerful and offer some hope for better stewardship of the green space to which we are drawn. This is a book to reread and savour. I look forward to his next one.
[Note: OPL does not have a copy of "The Peregrine".]
The Songs of Trees: a lyrically transfixing, minute inspection of a ubiquitous, taken-for-granted species, namely trees. If time is taken, one perceives a subtly haunting quality enveloping trees. Could it be that our fate is entwined with the quality of their existence? Are they sentinels as regards our very survival? Required of the reader is a modicum of perseverance, for the richness of detail in the various observations is quite amazing, thus precluding anything but a measured perusal.
In depth information of tree life sytems. The Hidden Life of Trees is more readable if you have interest.
https://ottawa.bibliocommons.com/item/show/958775026_the_hidden_life_of_trees