Review 690: In Trees

In Trees: An Exploration by Robert Moor
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This book is somewhat hard for me to categorize other than saying it is a non-fiction book about trees and the human life, well mostly. It’s somewhat philosophical, somewhat scientific, while also being partly autobiographic.

Each chapter, which can be lengthy, focus on different topic. The book doesn’t have a thesis or summation and the subtitle is perhaps very apt as it is an exploration of trees in a variety of ways.

It begins with the author and his personal experiences, first with climbing trees then with bonsai trees. One surprising chapter was genealogy based, looking at how family are like trees branching out, although it is more in-depth there than I’m summarizing here.

There was a chapter on the Korowai people who live in tree houses, and are mostly living as their people have done for thousands of years. The author does visit. There is a chapter on chimpanzees, who make nests in trees and of course Moor has to sleep the night in one. From there we move into tree-sitters and saving old growth. Moor volunteers a few stints then becomes quite involved in becoming an activist to save some old big trees in Canada.

I felt like the trees were more the launching pad for Moor’s discussions than be centrally focused. I didn’t mind some of the explorations, but a few of them I wasn’t too excited about.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.