A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub
A Book Riot "Favorite Summer Read of 2020"
A Food Tank Fall 2020 Reading Recommendation
Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the special
edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of the fortieth
anniversary of Milkweed Editions, celebrates the book as an object of
meaning that will last the ages. Beautifully bound with a new cover
featuring an engraving by Tony Drehfal, this edition includes a bookmark
ribbon and five brilliantly colored illustrations by artist Nate
Christopherson. In increasingly dark times, we honor the experience that
more than 350,000 readers in North America have cherished about the
book--gentle, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred--and offer an
edition that will inspire readers to gift it again and again, spreading
the word about scientific knowledge, indigenous wisdom, and the
teachings of plants.
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of
nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi
Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest
teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of
knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic
as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is
wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer
shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and
squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons,
even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that
range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its
flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the
awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and
celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living
world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we
be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to
give our own gifts in return.
