Here are 100 books that Thus Spoke the Plant fans have personally recommended if you like
Thus Spoke the Plant.
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I am an early medieval European historian who, in the last decades, branched out into environmental history. Having grown up in semi-rustic conditions, I have always been curious about rural things and past agricultural practices. I watch carefully as plows slice through fields, mind how birds and bees weave together their ecosystems, and pay attention to the phases by which trees put on and take off their leaves. Now a professional historian, my job involves reading a lot of rural and environmental history, so I have developed a good sense of books that mix academic rigor and approachability.
“The face that launched a thousand ships,” as Homer would say. Pollan’s witty and well-written treatment of how plants think and act to modulate their environments inspired 21st-century “critical plant studies” in the Anglophone world, including mine.
The book starts you thinking about the thousands of ways plants elbow into your world and how much they matter to your existence on earth, in economic but also spiritual senses. You end up agape in wonder.
A farmer cultivates genetically modified potatoes so that a customer at McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the autumn and in the spring has a riotous patch of colour to admire. Two simple examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? In blending history, memoir and…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
In my everyday world of responsibilities, I’m a writer, retired veterinarian, and freelance English editor for academic writing. But in my inner world of curiosity and obsessions, I’m forever a child with a profound longing to understand what the world is and how it works. Always searching on behalf of this forever child, I’ve read many a dull book about science, history, and writing. Despite having fascinating content, authors often flatten these subjects into featureless recitations. Happily, I’ve also found authors who express enthusiasm, expertise, or concern for their topic in prose that is as interesting in voice as it is in content.
I love swamps and streams and rivers (and I’m learning to love the ocean), and I especially love the miniature ecosystems that Kimmerer studies and describes with such gentle care in this book. Sure, everyone’s read Braiding Sweetgrass. (Wait, you haven’t? What are you doing here?! Go! Read!) But have you read the one about moss?
Both books reminded me of why I am drawn to science, of how structured observation and research can illuminate complex and dynamic processes. But I found the science in this one more compelling. It’s a collection of graceful retellings focused on the intricacies of the exact kinds of watery habitats I love best.
Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.
In this series of linked personal essays, Robin Kimmerer leads general readers and scientists alike to an understanding of how mosses live and how their lives are intertwined with the lives of countless other beings. Kimmerer explains the biology of mosses clearly and artfully, while at the same time reflecting on what these fascinating…
For fifteen years now, I have been exploring the seemingly strange connection between plants and philosophy. The unexpected twists and turns of this theme have taken me to forests and gardens, to collaborations with plant artists and plant scientists, to ancient thought and twenty-first-century experimental design. Once you get over the initial surprise (What can philosophy tell us about plants?), you will be in for the exhilarating ride that is vegetal philosophy, finding plant heritage in human thought, politics, and society; witnessing traditional hierarchies and systems of classification crumble into dust; and discovering the amazing capacities of plants that testify to one important insight—plants are smarter than you think!
Matthew Hall’s book offers a good formulation of the problem—Western philosophy has treated plants as things, not as living beings—and a nice overview of alternative (non-Western and, above all, Indigenous) approaches to plants that do not fall into the same trap. I have on many occasions vehemently disagreed with Hall’s recommendations that we should treat plants as persons, not least because of the problematic (and, ironically, very Western) heritage of personhood. But it is a wonderful entry point into the topic of plants and philosophy.
Challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants.
Plants are people too? No, but in this work of philosophical botany Matthew Hall challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants, arguing that they are other-than-human persons. Plants constitute the bulk of our visible biomass, underpin all natural ecosystems, and make life on Earth possible. Yet plants are considered passive and insensitive beings rightly placed outside moral consideration. As the human assault on nature continues, more ethical behavior toward plants is needed. Hall surveys Western, Eastern, Pagan, and Indigenous thought as well as modern science for attitudes toward plants,…
Trapped in our world, the fae are dying from drugs, contaminants, and hopelessness. Kicked out of the dark fae court for tainting his body and magic, Riasg only wants one thing: to die a bit faster. It’s already the end of his world, after all.
For fifteen years now, I have been exploring the seemingly strange connection between plants and philosophy. The unexpected twists and turns of this theme have taken me to forests and gardens, to collaborations with plant artists and plant scientists, to ancient thought and twenty-first-century experimental design. Once you get over the initial surprise (What can philosophy tell us about plants?), you will be in for the exhilarating ride that is vegetal philosophy, finding plant heritage in human thought, politics, and society; witnessing traditional hierarchies and systems of classification crumble into dust; and discovering the amazing capacities of plants that testify to one important insight—plants are smarter than you think!
This book challenges us to leave behind the conventional distinctions and classifications that separate plants from animals and humans. Instead, Wood urges us to view different species and kingdoms from the standpoint of their collaborative being-with. Seemingly familiar realities, including human and vegetal realities, become strange, indeed, uncanny. Throughout, he focuses on plants—trees, above all—to illustrate the main point of his important study. Wood’s philosophical concern is similar to my own: he wishes to save plants from the unfair neglect, to which philosophers have historically submitted them, and to restore to them their rightful place in the history of life and of thought.
Collected essays by a leading philosopher situating the question of the animal in the broader context of a relational ontology
There is a revolution under way in our thinking about animals and, indeed, life in general, particularly in the West. The very words man, animal, and life have turned into flimsy conceptual husks-impediments to thinking about the issues in which they are embroiled. David Wood was a founding member of the early 1970s Oxford Group of philosophers promoting animal rights; he also directed Ecology Action (UK). Thinking Plant Animal Human is the first collection of this major philosopher's influential essays…
I’ve been fascinated by horror since childhood–when Scooby-Doo: Where Are You! and Doctor Who were my favorite TV shows. I specifically remember watching the Doctor Who serial, The Seeds of Doom, and the 1962 film Day of the Triffids–both about killer plants! As I finished graduate school and then took jobs in higher education, I gravitated back to horror and the gothic, which I am now fortunate enough to teach and research. I’ve written academically about all kinds of horror (most recently folk horror)–and in 2015, myself and two others founded a website, Horror Homeroom, where I write about horror for more popular audiences.
Marder’s book is a brilliant exploration of plants in a philosophical (not a botanical) sense. It’s one of the most eye-opening (and accessible) philosophy books I’ve ever read, illuminating a swathe of life on Earth I honestly had never thought much about before.
Marder writes clearly and cogently about how we’ve thought about plants and how we’ve been wrong: we’ve been blind to plants; we’ve shaped them as our absolute opposite; we’ve treated them only instrumentally, exploiting them for what they can do for us. And then he makes a real effort to think through what plants are–what vegetal being actually is. One of the most mind-blowing things, he argues, in my view, is that we are much closer to plants than we think–we have our own buried “vegetal being.”
Marder’s elaboration of plant life–and how we’ve misunderstood and abused it–is literally the theoretical scaffold of all fiction and film…
The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing the life of plants "after metaphysics," Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his…
By Cathy N. Davidson and Christina KatopodisAuthor
Why are we passionate about this?
We are two college-level educators, one has had a long career, one a recent PhD. We share a commitment to lifelong learning, not just in the classroom but beyond. And we love learning from one another. We wrote The New College Classroomtogether during the pandemic, meeting over Zoom twice a week, discussing books by other educators, writing and revising and rewriting every word together, finding ways to think about improving our students’ lives for a better future even as the world seemed grim. The books we cherish share those values: hope, belief in the next generation, and a deep commitment to learning even in—especiallyin—the grimmest of times.
This gorgeous book by microbiologist Dr. Beronda L. Montgomery is as beautiful to read as it is to hold—in your hands, in your heart. We can’t stop thinking about Montgomery’s key lesson: if you have a plant that is struggling, youfigure out what environmental changes it needs to thrive—more or less water or sunlight, better soil. When people fail to flourish, we’re quick to blame the individual. As an African American woman, Montgomery makes us think about society and how we approach problems (do we compete or do we build a collaborative effort for a holistic solution?). Humans have much to discover from our photosynthesizing world: how plants learn—from their own kin, their friends, and their foes—and Montgomery helps us to understand the nature (literally) of teaching and learning.
An exploration of how plant behavior and adaptation offer valuable insights for human thriving.
We know that plants are important. They maintain the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. They nourish other living organisms and supply psychological benefits to humans as well, improving our moods and beautifying the landscape around us. But plants don't just passively provide. They also take action.
Beronda L. Montgomery explores the vigorous, creative lives of organisms often treated as static and predictable. In fact, plants are masters of adaptation. They "know" what and who they are, and they use this knowledge to make…
Everyday Medical Miracles
by
Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),
Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.
All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…
Since 1979 the life of soil and plants, and how they link to our own lives and health, has fascinated me. In the 1980s I was a maverick because as an organic market gardener, my work was mostly seen as irrelevant to society, producing food that was expensive and for only a few people. That changed from 1988 when the BBC filmed my garden, and green consciousness developed. Since then I have gone from being zero to hero and especially with regard to soil because since 1982 I've been gardening with the no dig method. My experience allows me to direct you towards these gems, which I'm sure you will find useful and enjoyable.
Plants feel things. Cleve Backster, an American detective who used lie detectors when interviewing suspects, discovered that plants made his detector needle swing wildly in response to thoughts he was having. Especially bad ones like that he might put boiling water on their leaves. He ran many experiments and found that plants also have memory, and react if people are lying about something in their presence!
Plants grow better for us when we treat them with love and respect. In return, they grow a warm and healthy look to their leaves which looks pleasing. We then appreciate each other in a loop of positive feedback. This book opened my eyes to what is possible when working with clients, and the fun we can have in helping them to express themselves.
Explore the inner world of plants and its fascinating relation to mankind, as uncovered by the latest discoveries of science. A perennial bestseller.
In this truly revolutionary and beloved work, drawn from remarkable research, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird cast light on the rich psychic universe of plants. Now available in a new edition, The Secret Life of Plants explores plants' response to human care and nurturing, their ability to communicate with man, plants' surprising reaction to music, their lie-detection abilities, their creative powers, and much more. Tompkins and Bird's classic book affirms the depth of humanity's relationship with nature…
I've been fascinated by psychedelics since I was a teenager, and along with my book I’ve written a number of academic papers and book chapters on the subject. It intrigues me how subtle changes in the brain’s chemistry leads to such profound changes in perception, cognition, and feeling, including religious feeling. I want to know what those experiences mean, and what they can tell us about the world. For if all they are is some derangement of the senses, why is it that so many writers, thinkers, philosophers and artists return to the experience, again and again? There is a riddle here, a mystery, and I love that I’m able to devote my research time to trying to answer it.
I suspect that many of us now know someone who’s been to the Amazon to take the psychedelic beverage, ayahuasca, returning with wide eyes and tales of profound healing. Here, anthropologist Stephan Beyer cuts through the romanticisation to present an accurate and engaging picture of ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon. He asks difficult questions, such as how well shamans actually cure sickness and why so many shamans engage in sorcery, but his inquiry is never less than sympathetic. That he peppers the book with his own psychedelic, ayahuasca visions, makes this one of the most accessible and engaging books on the subject.
In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages. They have retained features of a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine, and have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art. Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global…
I’m an herbalist, writer, and founder of Botanical Culture, a new compendium of plants and the people who cultivate them. I love helping people find the best herbs to support their health and well-being, whether by consulting, research and writing, or teaching workshops. After training at an herbalism school and more than a decade of growing and foraging, I’m still wonderstruck every time I walk into a garden or browse an apothecary. Great books about herbs inspire the same feeling of reverence for our oldest healing traditions and put the power of nature within reach.
Delving into the most significant herbs among Indigenous peoples of North America, Dr. Salmón revels in the stories that stitch plants into the memory of a culture. The result is an engaging repertoire of 80 beloved and well-illustrated herbs. Dr. Salmón, an ethnobotanist and professor, has marinated each entry in this beautiful book in a lifetime of learning from people who have profound knowledge of their homelands. Its title is inspired by his own tribe, the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) of the Mexican Sierra Madres, whose concept of iwígarareflects the understanding that all of life is interconnected and “shares the same breath.” I love the spirit of this book with its focus on narrative and come-sit-by-the-fire storytelling. If you’re hungry for the action and poetry of a good story heaped onto a plate of botanical legend and lore, this book is for you.
Iwigara, when translated, means the kinship of plants and people. And that is exactly what Enrique Salmon explores in this important book. Iwigara shares culturally specific information about 80 plants, addressing their historical and modern-day uses as medicine, food, spices, and more. Iwigara includes plants entries derived from many different American Indian tribes and seven geographic regions across the United States. Each plant entry includes the names commonly used by different tribes, a colour photograph, a short description, rich details about how the plant is used, and tips on identification and ethical harvest. Traditional stories and myths, along with images…
Karl's War is a coming-of-age-meets-thriller set in Germany on the eve of Hitler coming to power. Karl – a reluctant poster boy for the Nazis – meets Jewish Ben and his world is up-turned.
Ben and his family flee to France. Karl joins the German army but deserts and finds…
I’ve always been fascinated by nature, even from a young age. My parents would set up easels for my sister and me to paint outdoors, and I haven’t stopped drawing since. I tend to focus on flora and fauna, making illustrations with subdued colors and intricate details. I love to create illustrations for books, and occasionally, I’ll write them, too. Often reflective of history, mythology, and folklore, my work captures an old-world feeling and a love of nature. In my spare time, you can find me in my garden or out walking my dog, Molly.
So many books with beautifully illustrated florals are aimed at children, but the magic of flora is not just for kids. A wonderful example of this is The Illustrated Herbiary, which focuses on 36 botanicals like rosemary (for remembrance, just like in my book), apple, and clover. Filled with rituals and reflections for each herb, Kate O’Hara’s beautiful and detailed illustrations bring Maia Toll’s words to life.
Rosemary is for remembrance; sage is for wisdom. The symbolism of plants - whether in the ancient Greek doctrine of signatures or the Victorian secret language of flowers - has fascinated us for centuries. Contemporary herbalist Maia Toll adds her distinctive spin to this tradition with profiles of the mysterious personalities of 36 herbs, fruits, and flowers. Combining a passion for plants with imagery reminiscent of tarot, enticing text offers reflections and rituals to tap into each plant's power for healing, self-reflection, and everyday guidance. Smaller versions of the illustrations are featured on 36 cards to help guide your thoughts…
