Plant Life

It is remarkable that these diverse studies are edited to generate such a great coherence. [...] Taken together, this volume fills an important gap, since it links vital aspects for policy, conservation, and management with a nuanced overview building on local to regional examples. In times of ever shorter publications, this book is a valuable contribution. It provides diverse and layered information, just as the topic of wildlife conservation in farmland that it focuses on. -- Henrik von Wehrden, The Quarterly Review of Biology This wonderful little book assays plant diversity. It is the publication I suspect we all thought we would write when we taught our first course on plant diversity. After reading Plant Life I wished that I still taught a course on plant diversity, for this would be my textbook, given its clarity, simplicity, and elegance. -- Larry Hufford, The Quarterly Review of Biology The author's narrative style introduces many of the topics commonly covered in introductory plant biology courses, and the book may serve as a valuable supplement for introductory courses by providing an approachable and evolutionary-based initiation to the general plant biological topics. ... Students studying plant biology may find this book a useful supplement to a traditional course text, and interested general readers will likely enjoy it as a stand-alone text or in combination with more technical plant biological readings. Recommended. --Choice Essig has done a great job in retracing almost 4 billion years of evolution ... that has resulted in the plant life with which we share the planet today. But not only that, Plant Life is also well written --right from the first page of chapter 1. So, whilst it has the educational value of a textbook (and each of the chapters could easily be used as the basis of a lecture--or several in some cases!), it is eminently readable. --Annals of Botany Blog