NCW Libraries

"In this entertaining young readers edition of the environmental studies classic, Michael Pollan demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a reciprocal relationship. He links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, energy, and control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, coffee, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy...

Over millions of years, fig trees have shaped our world, influenced our evolution, nourished our bodies and fed our imaginations. And as author and ecologist Mike Shanahan proclaims, "The best could be yet to come." Gods, Wasps and Stranglers weaves together the mythology, history and ecology of one of the world's most fascinating-and diverse-groups of plants, from their starring role in every major religion to their potential to restore rainforests,...

"Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer's best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass is adapted for a young adult audience by children's author Monique Gray Smith, bringing Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation"--

Oliver the plant scientist uses his botanical inventions to fix problems for his neighbors, but he soon discovers Mrs. Kroftombottom's conundrum cannot be solved with science alone.

Renowned naturalist and bestselling author Jane Goodall examines the critical role that trees and plants play in our world.

In Love, Nature, Magic, organic advocate and former CEO of a global health and wellness company Maria Rodale combines her love of nature and gardening with her experience in shamanic journeying, embarking on an epic adventure to learn from plants, animals, and insects-including some of the most misunderstood beings in nature. Maria asks them their purpose and listens as they show and declare what they want us humans to know. From Thistles to Snakes,...

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer reflects on the practice of harvesting serviceberries and the concept of reciprocity central to Indigenous wisdom. She contrasts this with the dominant economic system rooted in scarcity, competition, and resource hoarding. Kimmerer highlights how the serviceberry tree, by sharing its abundance with its ecosystem, embodies a model of interdependence and mutual support. This ethic of reciprocity, she argues,...

In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes--a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands--she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism...

"In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices....

"Author Leigh Joseph, an ethnobotanist and a member of the Squamish Nation, provides a beautifully illustrated essential introduction to Indigenous plant knowledge. Plants can be a great source of healing as well as nourishment, and the practice of growing and harvesting from trees, flowering herbs, and other plants is a powerful way to become more connected to the land. The Indigenous Peoples of North America have long traditions of using native...