Book of the Week: 40 Ways That Trees Can Save Us

This is a book to keep on the nightstand and maybe give yourself the treat of one beautiful essay a night.

"The Global Forest: 40 Ways That Trees Can Save Us," may not be the best title. It sounds kind of like a how-to book. A checklist of things to tick off.

Instead, this is an elegant, eloquent collection of essays that conveys the author's reverence for forests in one area after another  -- in its nuts, in its medicinal properties, in its sacred connections.

Author Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist and expert on the medicinal, environmental and nutritional properties of trees.

"A beautiful and poetic tribute  based on wide-ranging scientific knowledge," wrote E.O. Wilson, ant expert and professor emeritus at Harvard University.

To give you the gist, here's an excerpt:

A forest is a home. All the forests of the global garden are homes to microbiota, insects, birds, mammals and plants. These homes are important to each and every form of life. No one species is better or worse than the other. They are equal to one another in a chain of connectivity. Each bee, each wolf has the right to dream or die, has the right to live a life, ifs own particular life, of wonder. And it has a right to that home until the end of time.

Penguin is the publisher. It's available in paperback for $15.