New York Times Bestseller A monumental novel about trees and people by one of our most “prodigiously talented” (The New York Times Book Review) novelists. An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in … A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers–each summoned in different ways by trees–are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest.
In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of–and paean to–the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours–vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity’s self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? “Listen. There’s something you need to hear.”
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I originally started reading a copy that I’d waited weeks for at the local library. Couldn’t finish in time and too many people waiting after me meant no renewal. Thus, I bought it. I’ve always loved trees, but this really opened my eyes. The characters got to me, just like the trees. I intend to encourage my children to read it, too. I highly recommend it.
Pretty amazing book.
It’s rare I come across a book whose message continues to resonate so powerfully, even a year after I’ve read it. In this complex, lyrically written novel, The Overstory, Powers has the courage to challenge readers to ponder a deeply disturbing question: what’s fundamentally wrong with a species who willfully destroys the environment essential for its survival? We follow his multiple protagonists as they come together from widely-varied walks of life to embrace activism. Through them, Powers speaks with moving eloquence about one of the Earth’s most enduring life-forms—trees—weaving a dramatic, heart-rending tale that should be on every citizen of this planet’s “must-read” list.
A heartbreaking yet beautiful story. If you remember Earth First or were ever in love with a tree this book will leave you gutted.
This is just a beautiful books exploring the world of plants and trees, and how little we know about what goes on underground and in the air. interspersed with the stories of real people, this book is a song to nature and a comfort in this difficult time. I think it’s a book to be read slowly and savored.
Gonna level with you, Bubs. I didn’t love this book as I had hoped to. It abounds with promise—a multi-viewpoint narrative connected by the human world’s relationship with trees. But to me, anyway, it was too slow to come together, its various plots and protagonists demanding an investment of patience that didn’t quite pay off. Powers’s writing is fantastic and his knowledge polymathic, but this book is somehow pas pour moi. That’s probably on me, not him.
This book absolutely blew me away. The Overstory is a stunning work of fiction and powerful a call to arms to save our planet from catastrophe. Told through a series of personal and interconnecting stories, like a forest, each part of this beautiful novel stands alone while working to create something greater than the some of its parts. I’m adding this to my list of books that would make the world a better place if everyone had read them.
There is so much to like about this book: The way the individual stories ultimately come together, the characters, the wealth of information about trees. This is a read that you will continue to contemplate for a long time after finishing.
While not an easy read, the stories are so slowly weaved together, that every page, every word, is literary magic.
I know I’m a bit late to read this, but I finally did and it was truly a most wonderful, timely, book. It really does change how you look at the world, which is what many of the people who blurbed to book said. I promise that you won’t look at tree or a
forest or modern agendas in forestry the way you might have in the past. The Overstory is a very important work. I spoke to a person yesterday who had read it three times – so please read it once!
This was the best book I’ve read this year. it was well researched and while not “preachey” it has a profound message for all of us whether we are tree huggers or merely concerned about the future of our planet.
I can only recommend this to people who are prepared and not to those who wish to go on to have a happy-ever-after day. This is not that sort of read. We do not live in a happy-ever-after world and things are getting worse, not better. This novel is about that world. In detail. And Powers is one writer most capable of driving that story to its inevitable and realistic conclusions.
At or near the top of my all-time favorites list! Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was well-deserved!!
It draws the reader into the realities of the threats to nature.
In a time when the environment needs our attention more than ever, here is a tale about how deeply connected we really are to our planet.
Loved the sustainability message
I admired the structure and lyrical language of the book more than the story. The metaphorical weaving of the species of trees and anatomy of trees was clever, and the activism was profound in its urgency. This book is an ode to trees. I admire its overarching and embracing reverence.
This book changes the way that you look at our world.
Short intriguing stories that combine the lives of trees and people. Poetry meets biography meets biology.
I’m obviously not the first to recommend this amazing book, but I can’t not help spread the word. I was a tree-hugger long before I read it, but ti’s true, Powers helps change the way you see the world. Don’t miss it.