An intimate, beautifully illustrated gift edition of poet laureate W. S. Merwin's wondrous story about how to resurrect a fallen tree

Political violence does not end with the last death. A common feature of mass murder has been the attempt at destroying any memory of victims, with the aim of eliminating them from history. Perpetrators seek not only to eliminate a perceived threat, but also to eradicate any possibility of alternate, competing social and national histories. In his timely and important book, Unchopping a Tree, Ernesto Verdeja develops a critical justification for why transitional justice works. He asks, “What is the balance between punishment and forgiveness? And, “What are the stakes in reconciling?” Employing a normative theory of reconciliation that differs from prevailing approaches, Verdeja outlines a concept that emphasizes the importance of shared notions of moral respect and tolerance among adversaries in transitional societies. Drawing heavily from cases such as reconciliation efforts in Latin America and Africa—and interviews with people involved in such efforts—Verdeja debates how best to envision reconciliation while remaining realistic about the very significant practical obstacles such efforts face Unchopping a Tree addresses the core concept of respect across four different social levels—political, institutional, civil society, and interpersonal—to explain the promise and challenges to securing reconciliation and broader social regeneration.

Intimate in size yet quietly breathtaking in scope, this graceful gift book will forever change how you think, and how you feel, about trees. In poetically sparse scientific observations, renowned conservation biologist Gretchen Daily narrates the evolution, impact, and natural wonder of trees. Alongside photographs by Chuck Katz, the text and images form a quiet and moving meditation on The Power of Trees. Twenty-six duotone black and white photographs illustrate the development of trees: how trunks were formed, what tree rings tell us about human societies, and how trees define the future of humanity. Pictures of trees threading through the landscape - dotting mountainsides, braiding along the sides of glassine rivers - bear witness to the lyrical force and clarity of Daily's observations. Recreating the authors’ hike together through the landscape of the Skagit River in Washington State, the balletic movement between Daily’s commentary and Katz’s vision reaches out to readers, inviting them to enjoy the landscape through a scientific understanding of trees. At once emotional and intellectual, The Power of Trees is the first collection of nature photographs that invites the reader to not only delight in the gorgeous play between light and shadow, but also the fascinating natural mechanisms that create such striking natural beauty. An ecologist by training, Gretchen Daily is an internationally acclaimed conservancy advocate and scholar. Her role as a National Trustee for The Nature Conservancy will feature prominently in the national marketing campaign to bridge the gap between scientific educators and the general nature reader.

About Trees considers our relationship with language, landscape, perception, and memory in the Anthropocene. The book includes texts and artwork by a stellar line up of contributors including Jorge Luis Borges, Andrea Bowers, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Lovelace and dozens of others. Holten was artist in residence at Buro BDP. While working on the book she created an alphabet and used it to make a new typeface called Trees. She also made a series of limited edition offset prints based on her Tree Drawings.

Captivating black-and-white photographs of the world’s most majestic ancient trees. Beth Moon’s fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation, on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves; others maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization. All, however, share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty, and this power, that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs. This handsome volume presents nearly seventy of Moon’s finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled, hollow-trunked yews—some more than a thousand years old—that grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar, called “upside-down trees” because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragon’s-blood trees, red-sapped and umbrella-shaped, that grow only on the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa. Moon’s narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree, while Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden, provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moon’s unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann, and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.

The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone introduces readers to the wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem through the works of fifty of the region’s distinguished writers and artists. This robust anthology of eclectic artwork and inspiring storytelling offers an enlivened take on the traditional field guide and argues for the intrinsic value of this world-renowned ecosystem. Yellowstone naturalist and artist Katie Shepherd Christiansen has compiled this sensible field guide and elegant art book to highlight the unique biodiversity of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, organized across four habitat strata: sky, earth, soil, and water. Writers and artists pair up to reveal new ways of understanding key species through prose, poetry, and artwork. The addition of scientific descriptions provides a natural history frame, and Christiansen’s illustrations of ecologically connected species bring life to every page. Contributors hail from the Greater Yellowstone area. Writers are Elise Atchison, Rick Bass, Todd Burritt, Tom Campbell, Lyn Dalebout, Matt Daly, Joanne Dornan, Gary Ferguson, Matt Hart, Geneen Marie Haugen, Susan Marsh, Craig Mathews, Arthur Middleton, Doug Peacock, Karen Reinhart, Kelsey Sather, Jack Turner, Rebecca Watters, Tina Welling, Marylee White, Connie Wieneke, Todd Wilkinson, and Terry Tempest Williams. Artists are Kalon Baughan, Tamara Callens, Meredith Campbell, Sue Cedarholm, Derek DeYoung, Loretta Domaszewski, Katy Ann Fox, Dave Hall, Dwayne Harty, Laney Hicks, DG House, Will Hunter, S. J. Karikó, Laney, Jennifer Lowe-Anker, Mimi Matsuda, James Prosek, Robert Schlenker, Jocelyn Slack, Tucker Smith, Kay Stratman, Kara Tripp, Shannon Troxler, Kathryn Mapes Turner, John Wasson, Carrie Wild, and Monte Yellow Bird Sr.

An Almanac for Moderns contains a short essay for each day of the year that contemplates a unique but factual aspect of unbridled nature. According to a review in Nation, this collection of essays manages to “appeal to the ordinary lover of nature . . . but the turn of Peattie’s mind is poetic and speculative.” The New York Times calls this book “a fine and subtle perception . . . rising at times to an intense lyric beauty . . . a book which the reader will deeply treasure, and to which he will repeatedly return.”

A Book of Hours contains 24 essays, one for each hour of the day, that seek to bridge the gap between definitive scientific philosophy and the sheer unadulterated beauty that Donald Culross Peattie envisioned within everyday life. The Boston Transcript referred to this collection as “science, in sheer poetry,” and the Chicago Daily Tribune mused that “it leaves one a better man for having read it” and offers “the inevitableness of natural laws and the truth of beauty, if one cares to seek it.”

At the heart of The Land's Wild Music is an examination of the relationship between writers and their. Interviewing four great American writers of place — Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin — author Mark Tredinnick considers how writers transmute the power of nature into words. Each author is profiled in a separate chapter written in rich, engaging prose that reads like the best journalism, and Tredinnick concludes with his own thoughts on what it takes to be "an authentic witness of place."