The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth

The Treeline

This original and readable book takes readers to a part of the world undergoing radical but little-understood change.

An urgent and insightful tour of some of the world's strangest, most bewitching and most endangered environments... This is an important book, and one I will be pressing into other people's hands.

Cal Flyn, author of ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT

[A] sweeping account of the Arctic forest that circles the world in an almost unbroken ring.

[A] lyrical and passionate book... The Treeline is a sobering, powerful account of how trees might just save the world.

[An] urgent investigation into the Arctic treeline... a meticulously researched and compellingly presented read.

Twill rightly provoke fear, but also a sense of wonder ... A beautiful and evocative portrait of the natural world. It is essential reading for those hoping to better understand our changing planet.

Rawlence is a fine ecologist and an excellent writer... The Treeline is timely, salutary and eminently readable. Excellent.

Ben Rawlence... writes with accuracy, beauty and urgency.

[A] moving, thoughtful, deeply reported elegy for our vanishing world and a map of the one to come.

A fascinating book drawing on a brilliant, original line of thinking... A perfect combination of lyrical writing and rigorous reporting. Utterly illuminating.

Sophy Roberts, author of THE LOST PIANOS OF SIBERIA

What an extraordinary book this is! ... This is not just a description of a warming world but an active invitation to live differently, to participate with wisdom and humility in the cacophonous and ever-unfinished abundance of terrestrial life.

Ben Ehrenreich, author of DESERT NOTEBOOKS

The very treeline is on the move: a devastating image. This book is an evocative, wise and unflinching exploration of what it will mean for humanity.

Absolutely fantastic and devastating.

Ben Rawlence circumnavigates the very top of the globe - returning with a warning, in this enthralling and wonderfully written book, that all would do well to heed.

Rawlence evokes the natural world in lyrical, delicate prose... A timely, urgent message delivered in graceful fashion.

Compelling, intriguing, and thoroughly engaging... A title of the utmost importance at a time of tremendous peril, The Treeline is a game-changer.

A lyrical travelogue documenting the decline of the great boreal forests that encircle the north of the globe, and the cultures that depend on them... A grim and thought-provoking read.

A sobering account... The Treeline is a powerful reminder of the far-off impacts of global warming.

The Treeline is wise and considered, offering both klaxon warning about the state of the earth and beautiful hymn to its interdependencies.

[A] riveting, rigorous (and frankly terrifying) book.

A ground-breaking and beautifully written investigation into the Arctic Treeline with an urgent environmental message. 
 
'Evocative, wise and unflinching' Jay Griffiths, author of Wild 
 
The Arctic treeline is the frontline of climate change, where the trees have been creeping towards the pole for fifty years already. 
 
Scientists are only just beginning to understand the astonishing significance of these northern forests for all life on Earth. At the treeline, Rawlence witnesses the accelerating impact of climate change and the devastating legacies of colonialism and capitalism. But he also finds reasons for hope. Humans are creatures of the forest; we have always evolved with trees and The Treeline asks us where our co-evolution might take us next. 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 
 
'A moving, thoughtful, deeply reported elegy for our vanishing world and a map of the one to come' Nathaniel Rich, author of Losing Earth 
 
'A lyrical and passionate book... The Treeline is a sobering, powerful account of how trees might just save the world, as long as we are sensible enough to let them' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Ben Rawlence circumnavigates the very top of the globe - returning with a warning, in this enthralling and wonderfully written book' Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees

Ben Rawlence

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebrate the joy and hope and wonder of small children. Beautiful and thought-provoking

A delightful and important book. Every parent should read this and consider it as a handrail for climate conscious and compassionate 21st-century parenting. Having loved every page I have now begun writing letters to my own young daughters to emulate Ben’s piercing insight and heartfelt example

How do you find the right path when no one has come this way before? This book is a thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory.

Humane, honest and painfully true, Rawlence’s letters to his daughters neatly encapsulate the systemic nature of our current crisis of values, while also shedding valuable light on where we might go and how we might thrive if we can only find a way to change them.

As moving as it is illuminating… a book like no other, a story told through letters written by a loving father to his young daughters as they grow up in an increasingly uncertain world.

These are beautifully written, endearing and hopeful letters which made me laugh and cry... It’s a book for all ages about conversations we all need to have -- and if you don’t know how to start them, there’s a very helpful manual at the back!

Jane Davidson, author of #FUTUREGEN: Lessons from a Small Country

A great taboo of our time - how to talk with our children about the broken world they’re growing up into - is coming to an end. This book marks a notable moment in that necessary transformation. The sensitivity with which Ben Rawlence approaches the topic, in these letters, is lovely to behold. Not least, because he sets out here how this is very much about listening to the young, too.

Emeritus Prof. Rupert Read, author of PARENTS FOR A FUTURE

I loved this book. Really, really loved it. Not just because I also have two daughters (so I was feeling it, on every step of a typically troubled parent’s climate path), but because, magically, he turns this intimate story into an extraordinarily compassionate account of what it's like to be living through the earliest stages of climate breakdown – regardless of whether or not you have children or grandchildren of your own.

The message running through the book is that adults have much to learn from children, not least their moral clarity about a climate problem that will be the defining challenge of their lives

Letters to my Children from a Changing Planet

‘Beautiful and thought-provoking’ Cal Flyn 
 
 
How do we raise children in a climate emergency? 
 
What should we teach them - and what kind of future are we preparing them for? 
 
Ben Rawlence began writing to his eldest daughter before she was born, trying to understand what it means to bring a child into a world facing ecological breakdown. Over the next twelve years, these letters – written to his two daughters as they grow – chart one father’s attempt to live with the central contradiction of our age: raising children within a system that threatens all life, including our own. 
 
By turns moving and funny, and always bracingly honest, Think Like a Forest explores love, fear and responsibility in perilous times. Rawlence finds the answers might lie in learning to see the world again through the eyes of a child so that we may embrace interdependence and regain our place in nature. To think like a forest, he shows us, may be the key to how we parent, how we live, and even whether we have a future on our planet at all. 
 
 
'A gift, not just for the author’s daughters, but for all of us who want to replace ecocide anxiety with the glimmerings of a better future’ Sophy Roberts 
 
‘A thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory’ Jay Griffiths

Ben Rawlence

Praise for Think Like a Forest

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebr ...

A delightful and important book. Every parent should read this and consider it as a handrail for climate conscious and compassionate 21st-century parenting. Having loved every page I have now begun writing le ...

How do you find the right path when no one has come this way before? This book is a thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory.

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebr ...

A delightful and important book. Every parent should read this and consider it as a handrail for climate conscious and compassionate 21st-century parenting. Having loved every page I have now begun writing le ...

How do you find the right path when no one has come this way before? This book is a thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory.

Climate change is an intergenerational issue: an existential crisis we are bequeathing to our descendants. Ben Rawlence's letters to his daughters grapple with questions of injustice and adaptation - but also celebr ...

A delightful and important book. Every parent should read this and consider it as a handrail for climate conscious and compassionate 21st-century parenting. Having loved every page I have now begun writing le ...

How do you find the right path when no one has come this way before? This book is a thoughtful, tender way to make a map of new and frightening territory.

Books by Ben Rawlence

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter