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  • Published: 27 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781846144110
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

The Global Forest

40 Ways Trees Can Save Us




Trees provide shelter, medicine and food. They are woven into our imaginations, folklore, ecosystems and our lives. And their future, as this extraordinary book shows, is ours ...

A world expert on how trees chemically affect our environment, Diana Beresford-Kroeger has woven together ecology, ancient myth, horticulture, spirituality, science and alternative medicine in The Global Forest to capture their enormous significance to us - and our future.

From enormous native Savannah trees that create their own sunscreen to hedgerows that contain and entire chain of life, this book shows us the power of the global forest. Trees absorb pollutants from the ground, comb particulates from the air and house beneficial insects. But what they do chemically in the environment is something we're only beginning to understand. Trees not only breathe and communicate; they also reproduce, heal and even nurture, and each of these forty interlocking essays picks out a different aspect of the life of the forest, explains it and then shows why it is so vitally important.

Combining the precision of a scientist with the lyricism of a poet, Diana Beresford-Kroeger has written an unforgettable work of natural history that shows how we really can save the Earth, one tree at a time.

  • Published: 27 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781846144110
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

Praise for The Global Forest

Beresford-Kroeger's ideas are a rare approach to natural history... The essays of The Global Forest are a beautiful and poetic tribute to their subject, based on wide-ranging scientific knowledge.

E.O. Wilson, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

A beautifully written and carefully constructed book ... As I walked to work this morning, I did begin to see the trees with a newfound respect and awe

Kayleigh Lawrence, New Scientist

[H]as the potential to do for trees what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring did for peregrines in the 1960s. The Global Forest has amazing breadth...Easy to read, each of her short essays could inspire a week's meditation. Live with them and discover your place in the global forest...When you have read this book you may want to embrace its author.

Graham Long, BBC Wildlife magazine