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

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe New Yorkers Best Books of 2024 TIMEs 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 New York Magazines 10 Best Books of the Year Washington Posts 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024 Smithsonians 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 YearLonglisted 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 HistoryA masterpiece of science writing. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding SweetgrassMesmerizing, worldexpanding, and achingly beautiful. Ed Yong, author of An Immense WorldRich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it! Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth ExtinctionAwardwinning Atlantic staff writer Zo 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 benefita 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 aweinspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In this captivating exploration of plant intelligence, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zo Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how insights into plant communication influence our understanding of what a plant is.We need plants to survive. But what do they need us forif at all? An eyeopening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plantsand our own placein the natural world, tackling the enthralling question of plant consciousness along the way.