Blog tour: The Power of Trees

Welcome to the blog tour for The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us If We Let Them by Peter Wohlleben!

More about the book…

Trees can survive without humans, but we can’t live without trees. Even if human-caused climate change devastates our planet, trees will return—as they do, always and everywhere, even after ice ages, catastrophic fires, destructive storms, and deforestation. It would just be nice if we were around to see them flourish. 

The Power of Trees is forester Peter Wohlleben’s follow-up to The Hidden Life of Trees, a Sunday Times bestseller that sold millions of copies worldwide. In his latest book, he is dismissive of token gestures in terms of tree planting. Just as he compared forest trees to ‘families’ and urban trees to ‘street urchins’ in his first book, in The Power of Trees he uses equally powerful metaphors to compare tree planting to battery farming ('Switching to fast-growing species and breeding trees for desired traits brought results like those achieved by factory farming: individuals ready for harvest at a young age, all with a relatively uniform carcass weight.').  However, he also joyfully describes trees determination to survive, describing seedlings breaking through the earth where you least expect them, as ‘stalwart tree children’.

This latest work is as fascinating and eye-opening as it is trenchant in its critique: on the one hand, Wohlleben describes astonishing discoveries about how trees pass knowledge down to succeeding generations and their ability to survive climate change; on the other, he is unsparing in his criticism of those who wield economic and political power—who plant trees exclusively for the sake of logging and virtue signaling—even as they ruthlessly exploit nature. The Power of Trees is a love letter to the forest and a passionate argument for protecting nature’s boundless diversity, not only for the sake of trees, but also for us.

More about the author…

Peter Wohlleben is one of the world’s most notable foresters and a passionate advocate for tree conservation.

Wohlleben lives in Germany, where he manages an ecologically conscious forest and runs an academy for education and advocacy.

His books are bestsellers around the world.

My impressions…

My wife always joked that trees tried to hide when they see me approach as I’m known to have a penchant for hugging them! Loving trees is easy but, as I’ve now found out, understanding them, their habits and needs takes this appreciation to a completely different level. I didn’t know I needed this book in my life but I did, and I think that all of us do. Through its English translation by Jane Billinghurst, Peter Wohlleben urges us to act now if we want a better future. As a mother, for me this is now more important than it ever has been. Approachable and fascinating, The Power of Trees is a book I’m sure I will read again.

Three words to describe it. Inspiring. Passionate. Thought-provoking.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it’s beautiful.

Have I read any other books by the same author? Not yet. I’d love to read The Hidden Life of Trees.

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