Description

New York Times Bestseller
The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024
TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024
New York Magazine’s 10 Best Books of the Year
Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024
Smithsonian’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year
A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Scientific American, New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly
An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History

“A masterpiece of science writing.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

“Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.” – Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

“Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!” – Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction

In The Light Eaters, award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger offers a fascinating journey into the hidden world of plants, revealing the complexity and intelligence of the botanical kingdom. This groundbreaking exploration challenges our perceptions of the natural world—not only reshaping how we see plants but also questioning the very idea of a hierarchy among living beings.

Plants must be remarkably inventive to survive while remaining rooted in place. Recent scientific discoveries have uncovered their astonishing abilities: they can communicate, recognize relatives, respond socially, hear sounds, alter their forms to blend into their environment, store memories that guide their development, and even manipulate animals to their advantage.

This book delves into the intricate and dynamic existence of plants, revealing a world filled with intelligence, adaptation, and survival in ways distinct from human cognition. Rather than mimicking our intelligence, plants may have developed their own parallel system. What constitutes intelligent life if not a vine that changes its leaves to match its surroundings, a flower that molds itself to perfectly fit its pollinator, or a pea seedling that detects and moves toward the sound of flowing water?

Traveling across the globe, Schlanger embeds herself with scientists dedicated to unraveling these mysteries, blending her own experiences with groundbreaking research. She highlights the intellectual debates shaping plant science today, as researchers struggle to redefine what plants are and how these discoveries alter our understanding of life on Earth.

As we depend on plants for survival, the book raises a critical question: do they need us at all? This eye-opening investigation urges us to reconsider the role of plants and our place in the natural world, challenging conventional wisdom about consciousness, intelligence, and our connection to the living ecosystem that sustains us.