Abby Shin

Please, PLEASE read this book!

This is the best non-fiction book I have ever read. It completely changed the way I see, value, and understand the world around me. If you read it, I am 100% confident it will change all of these things for you too.

The Light Eaters is the first book of climate journalist Zoë Schlanger (below). After becoming burnt out from the relentless amount of bad news, Schlanger turned to plants. Specifically, the growing – at times contested – fields related to plant behaviour.

Over the years, Schlanger travelled the world to learn from countless biologists, botanists, ecologists, philosophers, and more. This book is a beautifully written, comprehensive explanation of the groundbreaking advances in plant science that Schlanger has investigated. It is a captivating representation of countless experts and their discoveries – both past and present.

Each chapter of The Light Eaters introduces a new subfield of plant behaviour research, following Schlanger’s investigative journey. Every one of these subfields are more intriguing and surprising than the next. Each chapter, if not page, will completely revolutionize how you think of plants. What little is known about what they can do and how they work is just extraordinary. Some of the topics covered in the book include plants’ ability to feel, see, communicate, recognize their kin, pass defenses on to their offspring, and – in some cases – even mimic the plants around them.

While the concepts she introduces are complex, Schlanger illustrates them in ways that are extremely thorough yet accessible. You will finish this book with a swath of new knowledge, but also a burning curiosity to explore plants further. You will gain a deep respect for every single plant around you, and come to see them all as little miracles.

When I say this book could start a revolution, I mean that – with enough readership – it could help catalyze the fight for a world in which our legal, economic, and political systems value the environment entirely differently than they do now. And, it could motivate the general public to place power and influence in those that have been fighting for these changes for decades. A future in which we live harmoniously with the natural world should be our only choice, and I am certain anybody that reads The Light Eaters will agree.

You should be able to find The Light Eaters at any local bookstore, such as Book City! If they don’t have it in stock, they should be able to order it for you.

Zoë Schlanger

Schlanger is currently a staff writer at The Atlantic. She has a long, extremely accomplished background in nature, climate, and health journalism. I would highly recommend checking out her work (linked here and here) – each piece is extremely important and incredibly well written. Some of her recent pieces include: The Trump Administration Is Violating the First Rule of Disasters, and America’s Coming Smoke Epidemic. In a world chock-full of misinformation, it is crucial that we uplift voices like Zoë Schlanger.

I was regaining material intimacy with the natural world by looking at plants. It wasn’t a way to ignore environmental catastrophe; it was a way to reattach myself to the stakes. Each plant was an embodied world we stood to lose, every ecosystem another galaxy. – Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters, pg. 23.