The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

By Zoë Schlanger NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New Yorker 's Best Books of 2024 • TIME's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 • New York Magazine's 10 Best Books of the Year • Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024 • Smithsonian 's 10 Best Science Books of the Year • A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Scientific American , New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor , Library Journal , and Publishers Weekly • An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize • Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History “A masterpiece of science writing.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass “Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.” —Ed Yong, author of An Immense World “Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!” — Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of natural history and popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom, “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.” ( The New Yorker ) It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit—a fascinating display of plant behavior and sensory abilities, to name just a few remarkable talents. The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe

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