April 13 - Braided Sweetgrass

Braided Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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 Washington Post “2020 Holiday Gift Guide” Recommendation

A Minneapolis Star Tribune “2020 Holiday Book Recommendation”

A Book Riot “Favorite Summer Read of 2020​”

A Food Tank Reading Recommendation for Fall 2020

Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the hardcover 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, a deckled edge, 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, a mother, and 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 a rich braid of 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 a wider 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.

History’s deadliest pandemics, from ancient Rome to modern America

 Centuries before coronavirus, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and other contagions killed hundreds of millions around the world

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/retropolis/coronavirus-deadliest-pandemics/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F300da74%2F6033dd669d2fda4c88ee644b%2F596af103ae7e8a44e7cec2b7%2F8%2F70%2F6033dd669d2fda4c88ee644b

March 9 - Never Home Alone

Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live by Rob Dunn

Although you may encounter reminders of life that flourishes outdoors inside your home—the occasional spider in the bath, the mold that sometimes sprouts on food—by and large, the only living beings you will consciously encounter in this space will be the other people in your life and your pets. After reading this book, you will probably see things quite differently.

Our homes are teeming with life. A microbial analysis of household dust samples from just 40 homes in North Carolina yielded nearly 8000 different microbial taxa, for example. Household microbial communities vary by habitat: As Rob Dunn writes, “…samples from pillowcases and toilet seats are different from each other, but perhaps not as different as you might hope.”

Larger creatures are often hiding in plain sight as well. Dunn describes surveys of the arthropod communities in homes around the world. His own house was home to at least 100 arthropod species—mainly flies and spiders—and worldwide, the numbers of species stretch into the thousands.

Dunn considers how human history (and prehistory) may have shaped the microbial communities that have evolved to share our lives. He delves into research that enumerates the health benefits to humans of closer contact with natural biodiversity and, conversely, the problems that arise through the evolution of pathogens resistant to control measures. Perhaps above all, this book is a vehicle for conveying the story of how science is done—the quirks and collaborations that lead from one discovery to another, and the role of citizen science in advancing knowledge.