'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.
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
Book Description
Meet the Bishnois, the world's oldest sustainable community - with a foreword from Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees
About the Author
Martin Goodman is the author of twelve books of award-winning nonfiction and fiction, including his account of eco-lawyers saving the planet, Client Earth. Other books on India include a spiritual biography, In Search of the Divine Mother, and On Sacred Mountains. He is emeritus professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hull.
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