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
Chautauqua 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 Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë
Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the
plant kingdom “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our
place in the hierarchy of beings and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.” ( The New
Yorker ) It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while
rooted in a single spot plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years
scientists have learned about their ability to communicate recognize their kin and behave
socially hear sounds morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings store useful
memories that inform their life cycle and trick animals into behaving to their benefit to
name just a few remarkable talents. The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of
green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very
understanding of agency consciousness and intelligence. In looking closely we see that
plants rather than imitate human intelligence have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is
intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs a
flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator a pea seedling that can
hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe digging
into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days
studying these amazing entities up close. What can we learn about life on Earth from the living
things that thrive adapt consume and accommodate simultaneously? More important what do we
owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the
latest epiphanies in botanical research Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among
the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject offering a glimpse of a field in
turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our
understanding of what a plant is. We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at
all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in this book challenges us
to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world.
