David George Haskell

Far from being mere ornaments, flowers have shaped the very fabric of life on our planet. Their evolution triggered a cascade of biodiversity, transforming oceans, creating new habitats, and even altering the climate. Their beauty turned adversaries into allies, and their adaptability turned environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. Weaving together vivid storytelling, lyrical writing, and cutting-edge science, Haskell illuminates flowers as portals into deep time and essential players in our ecological future. He reveals how flowers built and sustained ecosystems from rainforests to prairies and have been pivotal in the evolution of species like butterflies, bees, and birds. He also uncovers their crucial role in human history, as cultural emblems, keys to scientific leaps, and evolutionary catalysts, with flowering grasses calling our ancestors to leave the trees, laying the foundation for agriculture and modern civilization. From lessons in resilience and creativity found among gardeners’ favourites, such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, to rediscovering lesser-known wonders, like our uncelebrated underwater meadows that sustain life and the secrets of our most humble wildflowers, How Flowers Made Our World invites readers to see these blooms in a whole new light - as the dynamic and influential forces they truly are.

We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David George Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rainforests shimmering with insect sounds and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution's creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animals and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth's history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets to show that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, less beautiful. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, act.

The author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature's most magnificent networkers -- trees "Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture." - Science Friday WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING David Haskell has won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, he brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees, exploring connections with people, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. He takes us to trees in cities (from Manhattan to Jerusalem), forests (Amazonian, North American, and boreal) and areas on the front lines of environmental change (eroding coastlines, burned mountainsides, and war zones.) In each place he shows how human history, ecology, and well-being are intimately intertwined with the lives of trees. Scientific, lyrical, and contemplative, Haskell reveals the biological connections that underpin all life. In a world beset by barriers, he reminds us that life's substance and beauty emerge from relationship and interdependence.