Tree

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object's entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the present. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve us in many ways as keel, lodgepole, and execution site and yet to become human, we had to come down from their limbs. In this book Matthew Battles follows the tree's branches across art, poetry, and landscape, marking the edges of imagination with wildness and shadow.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

About the Author

Matthew Battles is Associate Director of the metaLAB and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, USA. His previous publications include Library- an Unquiet History (2004), The Sovereignties of Invention (2012) and Library Beyond the Book (2014).