New York Times Bestseller

Award-winning Atlantic writer Zoë Schlanger’s New York Times bestselling exploration of the hidden world of plant intelligence, “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.”—The New Yorker

“I’ll never look at plants—or the natural world—in the same way again, after reading this stunning book. . . . Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes

“A masterpiece of science writing.”—Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

To live and thrive while rooted in a single place, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. Recently, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, to recognize their kin and behave socially, to hear sounds, to morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, to store memories that inform their life cycle, and even to trick animals into behaving to their benefit.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.