The first half of this book, in particular, may profoundly change the way you look at plants. If Mancuso's academic credentials were not so sterling, I would have doubted some of the amazing things he describes. Highly, highly recommended. ( )

"La velocità è un fattore del tutto marginale nella vita delle piante. Ciò che davvero interessa a queste ultime non è tanto rispondere in fretta, quanto rispondere bene, così da risolvere i problemi." ( )

Mind-blowing! ( )

I had high hopes for this one, and it started out really strong. But it lost its momentum after the first few chapters.

This is a translation from the original Italian, so I can't be sure there's not some explanation there, but the writing felt oddly defensive, as if it should have been titled In Defence of the Revolutionary Genius of Plants. It also fell in this weird middle ground of explaining what felt like super obvious basics in a very academic voice.

I admit there were some chapters I skimmed, but then things got interesting in chapters 4 and 5, although I got irritated by the failure of reasoning exhibited by the author - which is, to be fair, a very common one. The chapter concerned the symbiotic and sometimes manipulative relationship between some plants and animals and in the writing he mused on the motivation of the plant to develop such strategies. I hear/read this type of thing a lot and it drives me nuts; I always picture of room full of whatever - in this case acacias - sitting around pondering, with a whiteboard covered in figures in the background, plans for their future evolutionary development. I'm not schooled in science, but I do know that's putting the cart before the horse.

I was back to skimming towards the end as there was a lot of general lecturing on how applications from the plant world can be applied to solve the industrial world's problems. There's a little tooting of his own horn too, but to be fair the Jellyfish Barge sounds incredibly cool. The last chapter on plants in space I skipped completely as I lacked the interest and the attention span to tackle it (it was short and I'm not sorry).

A beautifully made book, with some really good information but overall it was just not written (or perhaps translated) in an engaging enough way to keep me glued to the page. ( )

Un libro veramente interessante, che parla di piante a 360 gradi, ma anche di cambiamento climatico e di quello che ci prospetta il futuro su questo nostro pianeta.
Dovrebbe essere una lettura obbligata per tutti i personaggi di spicco (politici, manager, ecc...) che prendono decisioni fondamentali per il nostro futuro. E non aggiungo altro... ( )