Description

‘Sensitive and engaging … I hope everybody reads it’ Brian Eno

A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024

With a foreword by Peter Wohlleben

How much can one love a tree? Rajasthan, in northern India, is home to the Bishnoi, a community renowned for the extreme lengths they go to in order to protect nature: Bishnoi men and women have died to defend trees from loggers and wildlife from poachers.

Writer and conservationist Martin Goodman, one of few trusted outsiders, relates the history of the Bishnoi, and asks what a world facing climate change and natural disaster can learn from a 600-year-old sustainable community leading an existence in delicate balance with nature and under threat from rapacious modernity.

My Head for a Tree offers a timely reflection on indigenous, community-based activism and how we might adjust our lives to fight for the natural world.

Publisher Review

Remarkable — ‘Books of the Year’ * Spectator * The story of the Bishnois – the first true environmentalists – is important, inspirational and humbling. My Head for a Tree is essential reading for all those who care about our magnificent planet. Utterly fascinating — Andrea Wulf, author * The Invention of Nature * This sensitive and engaging book is about climate collapse, and about an extraordinary group of people – the Bishnoi – whose intimate connection to the natural world offers us a way of understanding and confronting our present crisis. It’s full of surprises. I hope everybody reads it — Brian Eno