The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars | 546 ratings

Price: 22.04

Last update: 01-10-2025


Top reviews from the United States

seek moksha
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly written and awe-inspiring
Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2024
The Light Eaters is far and away the most enjoyable — thrilling even — book that I've ever read about plants. As a lifelong gardener, farmer, and grower of trees, I've read many.

Zoë Schlanger does a brilliant job of bringing her own awe and wonder about plants into her study of recent scientific breakthroughs. The latest science proves an intelligence, creativity, and even high awareness that will forever change how you view plants.

I especially appreciated the introduction and first chapter, where she shares her motivation for writing this gem. When reading about her re-awakened childlike awe at the wondrous beauty of the natural world, it rekindled my own wonder. I wish that more scientists (and farmers, gardeners, and biology teachers) could share with same awe and wonder. As a result, the chapters on science are alive and thrilling. I really felt that I was viewing those things through the awethor's (misspelling intended) inspired eyes and mind.

Needless to say, I'm encouraging all of my plant-loving friends to read this book, along with many who have very little interest in plants.

My deepest gratitude and congratulations to Zoë Schlanger for the gift you have given us.
Randi
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!!
Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2024
Written well and very understandable - not written in scientific language so great for anyone. Perfect for those seeking some very interesting info about our plant world. Well worth spending the time to read and digest all the new information.
Amazon2
5.0 out of 5 stars The Light Eaters
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2024
Excellent book, extremely well written which addresses a controversial topic in science, the communication between plants, in a rational well thought out manner, and all the ramifications that implies.
Some of the descriptions of plant adaptions and the science behind them are top notch and certainly should give all readers food for thought. The complete molecular understandings are still not in place for many of the observations, but progress is being made in this important field despite poor funding for the research.
Meade fischer
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and highly informative book.
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2024
This will change your relationship to plants. The author's excellent research and very readable prose will take you deep into the world of plants, and you'll never see them the same way again. This non fiction book is as easy to read as a good novel, and the information contained within is considerable. I would recommend this book to anyone with a curious mind.
alan h. flinchbaugh
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading but flawed
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2024
The Light Eaters -- catchy title -- is about the latest discoveries in Botany suggesting that plants are far more complex and active in looking out for themselves than previously supposed.

This isn't some New Age claim that plants like classical music and thrive if you talk nice to them. Zoe Schlanger is an experienced journalist, and fairly disciplined about citing authoritative sources for what she expounds, and she is mostly careful not to make unwarranted claims about the abilities of plants at communication, socialization, fighting off pests and disease, adapting to their environment and so forth. Mostly.

Now and again, however, the reader finds himself down the rabbit hole, as Ms. Schlanger rhapsodizes in a flurry of ifs, maybes and perhapses about plants that talk, see, shape shift, and have emotions. There are occasions, too, when Schlanger seems to contradict herself and leave out scientific details that one suspects contradict her conviction that plants are conscious entities.

Example: the remarkable shape shifting Boquila, we're told, can't be successfully grown in a botanist's lab, but, a few pages later, some guy in London sends that same botainist pictures of a Boquila growing nicely in his apartment and mimicking the appearance of one of his other houseplants. She exquisitely details a theory about Bacteria clouds causing the Boquila's ability to mimic other plants by hijacking the copied plants genetic material and altering the Boquila's DNA with it, without explaining how the Boquila has been known to mimic plants made of plastic (there is no DNA in plastic), or how mutations in DNA takes far longer to show up as a phenotype, than it takes a Boquila to mimic a plant.

Ms. Schlanger may be forgiven for dwelling a little much on the philosophical ramifications of the 'plants are people too' suggestions in The Light Eaters. In these times when mankind seems to be working hard at killing off itself and all living things on the planet, her fantasy of giving plants legal rights and standing in the courts is not a bad idea, however fanciful it may be. Her prose, on these occasions is a little too purple " drawing attention to itself, and away from the story being told." The author would do well to let the facts in her book draw the reader to his own conclusions than try to enforce hers.

On the whole, though, the book is a worthwhile, fascinating, informative and thought provoking read, making some important points about the plant life that is essential to the survival of us and of our planet.
Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Suddenly, every plant feels like an ancestor.
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2024
What an amazing book ... not only a wondrous story but written in a way that opens a new world. I'm only a few chapters in but I can't put it down and know that it is changing my understanding of the Universe.
Larry Deemer
5.0 out of 5 stars Well written and easy to understand “the science.”
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2024
A very large topic that covers a lot of territory, both literally and figuratively.
Not finished reading but will update this review if needed.
Jann Sparks
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly amazing and very well written
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2024
How do we connect with plants why that connection is so important. I have just begun reading the book and I am securely hooked.

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