The Overstory

by Richard Powers

Humans carry around legacy behaviors and biases, jerry-rigged holdovers from earlier stages of evolution that follow their own obsolete rules. What seem like erratic, irrational choices are, in fact, strategies created long ago for solving other kinds of problems. We’re all trapped in the bodies of sly, social-climbing opportunists shaped to survive the savanna by policing each other. For days, the book carries him along

Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men. . . . In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.