The Forest Unseen

David Haskell’s work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. He is a professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of the South and a Guggenheim Fellow. His 2017 book The Songs of Trees won the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing. His 2012 book The Forest Unseen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and won the 2013 Best Book Award from the National Academies, the National Outdoor Book Award, and the Reed Environmental Writing Award. His new book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, will be published in March of 2022.
 
To listen to a collection of sounds from the trees in this book, visit dghaskell.com.

Praise for The Forest Unseen:

[Haskell] thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist.
James Gorman, The New York Times

Very much a contemporary biologist in his familiarity with genetics and population ecology, [Haskell] also has the voracious synthetic imagination of a 19th-century naturalist. More importantly, Mr. Haskell is a sensitive writer, conjuring with careful precision the worlds he observes and delighting the reader with insightful turns of phrase.
--The Wall Street Journal

I really enjoyed and learned a tremendous amount from [The Forest Unseen] . . . [it] opened the world up to me in a new way.
Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

What goes on over the course of a year, in one square meter of old growth forest? Everything, to those who look. Haskell s writing is natural history, in every sense of the phrase, at its very best.
Richard Powers, author of The Overstory, PBS Newshour

"[Haskell] documents the marvelous profusion of life . . . [a] magical look at the interconnectedness of the natural world, and the invisible ties that bind us together." 
The Guardian

Haskell leads the reader into a new genre of nature writing, located between science and poetry.
 E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

[Haskell's] observations--of lichens, snowflakes, salamanders, and more--are deftly interwoven with the science. His account is fascinating, whether he's stripping off in January to experience the physiological effects of severe cold, describing the symphonic sounds of trees in a high wind, or wondering at the bacteriological properties of a vulture's digestive tract.
--Nature 

Mixing poetry with natural history, [Haskell] follows subtle scientific threads such as species interactions