Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet. By John W. Reid and Thomas E. Lovejoy. 2022. Norton, $30 (9781324006039).
Preserving Earth’s five remaining megaforests will keep carbon out of the atmosphere, protect biodiversity, and support Indigenous peoples. Reid and Lovejoy expertly illuminate the intricately webbed fecundity of vast forests in New Guinea, the Congo, the Amazon, North America, Russia, and elsewhere across northern Europe.
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. By Suzanne Simard. 2021. Knopf, $27.95 (9780525656098).
Forest ecologist Simard interleaves her family’s history as British Columbia loggers with detailed accounts of her revolutionary findings about the ways “mother trees” nourish and protect seedlings and “continuously gauge, adjust, and regulate” their support of the entire forest through a finely calibrated web that mirrors our…