A serviceberry tree hands its fruit to birds, animals and people alike. Robin Wall Kimmerer starts from that habit and thinks through what an economy built on sharing could look like.
Readical Key Points
- An instant New York Times bestseller, and named a best book of the year by Scientific American, Forbes and Library Journal, according to the publisher
- Starred review from Booklist; also reviewed in Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal
- Illustrated by John Burgoyne
- Subjects include the gift economy, reciprocity, Indigenous knowledge and plant ecology
- Hardcover (paper over board), 128 pages, Scribner, 2024
Kimmerer begins with berry picking and moves outward to the ways people trade, hoard and give. Drawing on Potawatomi teaching and her work as a scientist, she sets the tree's habit of handing its fruit to a whole community of animals against a market that runs on scarcity and competition, and argues that wealth is better counted in relationships than in possessions. The book is brief, essayistic and personal, with Burgoyne's drawings of plants and animals throughout.
At 128 pages it suits a single sitting, a book group or a slow reread across a season. Readers of Braiding Sweetgrass, of nature writing, and of new thinking about economics and community will recognize the voice. One tree, heavy with fruit it was never going to keep, carries the whole argument.
About the Author and Illustrator
Robin Wall Kimmerer, a scientist and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022, has taught as a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and founded the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Illustrator John Burgoyne, a member of the New York Society of Illustrators, has won more than 100 awards in the United States and Europe.
Condition: Brand New and Readical Ready.
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