Hidden Life of Trees (Wohlleben) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news—long known to biologists—that trees in the forest are social beings.
Sally McGrane - New York Times


[A] declaration of love and an engrossing primer on trees, brimming with facts and an unashamed awe for nature.
Andrea Wulf - Washington Post


[A] passionate and penetrating guide to the inner workings of each tree and every woodland.
Gerard Helferich - Wall Street Journal


The book is dreamy and strange; it tells about trees and their tightknit communities in the forest. The book is full of science. But it's written from the standpoint of a person who lives and works with trees in the forest rather than someone who studies them.… Wohlleben enumerates myriad ways in which trees actually communicate with each other. For example, when confronted with a parasite, some trees will emit [protective] chemicals…nearby trees, whose contact with the original tree is through…the tips of their roots, will then emit the chemical repellent in turn.
NPR.org


German forester Peter Wohlleben’s account of anthropomorphized trees…infuriates scientists and utterly charms everyone else who reads it.
Brian Bethune - Maclean's Magazine


Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees breaks entirely new ground…[Wohlleben] has listened to trees and decoded their language. Now he speaks for them.
Thomas Pakenham - New York Review of Books


[F]ascinating.… Wohlleben anthropomorphizes his subject, using such terms as friendship and parenting, which serves to make the technical information relatable, and he backs up his ideas with information from scientists. He even tackles the question of whether trees are intelligent.
Publishers Weekly


In this spirited exploration, [Wohlleben] guarantees that readers will never look at these life forms in quite the same way again.… [E]ven general readers will gain a rich appreciation of a forest's dynamism. —Kelsy Peterson, Forest Hill Coll., Melbourne, Australia
Library Journal