Recommended Tree/Nature Books

• The Wild Trees by Richard Preston. This book is a thrilling account, written in easy to read narrative form, of those pioneers in the 1980's that discovered, climbed and researched the world's tallest trees: the majestic Redwoods of northern California. I read this book in two days because I simply couldn't put it down.

 

• Meetings With Remarkable Trees and Remarkable Trees of The World, both by Thomas Parkenham. These two large, paperback coffee table books, offer some of the most visually stunning photographs of some of the world's most exotic, ususual and amazing trees I've ever seen. A great gift and must have book for anyone who loves Nature and trees.

 

• The Orchid, by Takashi Kijima, the award winning nature photographer from Japan. Orchids are not only the most beautiful and exotic plants species on Earth, but they're also the most diverse with well over 20,000 different types of Orchids, coming in all shapes, sizes, colors and aromas. This beautifully presented book is by no means the only book on the market on Orchids, but it's one of my favorites because of the incomparable photography and the way it's laid out with each section featuring Orchids by their respective color groupings.

 

• The Beckoning Path: Lessons of A Lifelong Garden by Ted Nierenberg, noted garden designer and photographer. If you want to see how a magnificent garden evolves through time and through the seasons, then this is the book for you. Spanning many decades of Nature's caprices and man's experimentation, this ethereal 15 acre, lake garden in upstate New York, named Cobamong garden, will certainly inspire you.

 

• The 5000 Year Leap, by W. Cleon Skausen. This brilliantly written and well researched book, outlines the 28 Principles of Freedom our Founding Fathers said must be understood and practiced by all who desire peace, freedom and prosperity. It’s primarily because of mass adherence to these 28 Principles, that the United States of America has made more progress in the past 200 years than all humanity made in the last 5000 years. A must read for people of all ages, particularly in these unsettling times.

 

• A Briefer History of Time by one of my personal heroes, Stephen A. Hawking, one of the greatest thinkers of all time. This book is a follow up book to his runaway worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time. This newer version is a more accessible formulation of Mr. Hawking’s major concepts: the nature of space and time; the role of God in creation; and the history and future of the universe. I love cosmology, and no one explains it better than S.A. Hawking.

 

• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I found this #1 National Bestseller (over one million sold) so compelling that I could hardly put it down. "A real pleasure...Blink brims with surprising insights about our world and ourselves." -Salon.com. Blink revolutionizes the way we perceive and understand the world within our consciousness and how this effects our everyday activites and decision making.

 

• Rumi: The Way of Passion by Andrew Harvey. This is an extremely well researched and written book about the Sufi mystic and master poet of all time, Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, simply and affectionately known as, Rumi. Now that many of his poems and other writings have been translated into English, Rumi's works are enjoying phenomenal success in the West, including the U.S. Passionate, profound and searing, Rumi's words fall onto and into consciousness as precious rain on parched desert sand.