The Overstory

“It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it…. It changed how I see things and that’s always, for me, a mark of a book worth reading.” – Barack Obama“The best book I’ve read in 10 years. It’s a remarkable piece of literature, and the moment it speaks to is climate change. So, for me, it’s a lodestone. It’s a mind-opening fiction, and it connects us all in a very positive way to the things that we have to do if we want to regain our planet.” – Emma Thompson“An ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them.” – citation from the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction“This book is beyond special.… It’s a kind of breakthrough in the ways we think about and understand the world around us, at a moment when that is desperately needed.” – Bill McKibben“A towering achievement by a major writer.” – Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland“Monumental… The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of the story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size.… A gigantic fable of genuine truths.” – Barbara Kingsolver - The New York Times Book Review“The best novels change the way you see. Richard Powers’s The Overstory does this. Haunting.” – Geraldine Brooks“This ambitious novel soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction.… Remarkable.” – Ron Charles - The Washington Post“The best novel ever written about trees, and really, just one of the best novels, period.” – Ann Patchett“Should be mandatory reading the world over.” – Emilia Clarke“I’ll never see a tree the same way again.” – Louis Sachar - New York Times“I’ve read a lot of good books, but the last truly great book I read was The Overstory, by Richard Powers.” – Ed Helms - New York Times Book Review

Richard Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including The Overstory, Bewilderment, and Orfeo. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.