Evergreen Virtual Author Event

Evergreen is a lively, surprising tour of how our country was built by the very trees we lug into our living rooms each December. We are delighted to celebrate it's release with author Trent Preszler this holiday season. This event is perfect for us in Michigan, it contains a vary of forest types and the White Pine is Michigan's state tree. We look forward to a rich conversation and educational experience.

Please us online at this link. There are free and book tickets. The event will take place online. If you pre order the book with us in store, we will send you the link or add you to the event as a book ticket holder.

About the Book:

A sweeping natural history of the most valuable trees on earth that have quietly transformed our economies, cultural traditions, and collective imagination for millennia.

Every December, homes, offices, and town squares around the world are adorned with lavishly decorated evergreens to ring in the holiday season. But how did this beloved tradition begin? And as the planet continues to warm and more people swap real trees for artificial ones, will Christmas trees still be here for future generations?

In Evergreen, Cornell University professor Trent Preszler takes us on a riveting journey through history, culture, and science, exploring America’s story through the lives of its most resilient and cherished trees. From the annual hunt for the perfect Rockefeller Center spruce, back to the earliest days when Ancestral Puebloan builders crafted remarkable dwellings from pine beams, Evergreen reveals surprising connections between past and present that fueled America’s rise to global prominence.

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Preszler captures the enduring struggle between nature’s grandeur and humanity’s desire to control and consume it. At once expansive and intimate, Evergreen delivers a stirring reflection on what it means to live in a world where Christmas trees stand as silent witnesses to our restless ambition, challenging us to reconsider the delicate balance between commercial excess and our profound yearning for hope and immortality.

About the Author:

​​Trent Preszler is a professor of practice in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and serves as director of the Henry David Thoreau Foundation’s Planetary Solutions Initiative. After growing up on a cattle ranch in South Dakota and attending a one-room schoolhouse on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, his first job out of college was a White House internship for President Bill Clinton. Preszler received a BS from Iowa State University and an MS and a PhD from Cornell University. A former winemaker and wooden boatbuilder, his life was profiled in a documentary that won a New York Emmy Award in 2018.​

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In conversation with:

Co- Director / Board President of Arboretum Detroit - Andrew “Birch” Kemp is a lifelong Detroiter and a former Detroit public high school teacher. He taught English and built arboretums with students at three different high schools. He has been planting trees in Poletown for over 20 years and started the nonprofit Arboretum Detroit with his partner, Kinga Osz-Kemp in 2019, to expand and formalize this work. He has recently left teaching to devote himself to the dream of building an arboretum.

Arboretum Detroit is a Non-Profit organization dedicated to building and maintaining in perpetuity an internationally recognized arboretum spanning the city and inspiring visitors with the love and stewardship of trees.

"A perfect holiday read that will illuminate your Christmas tree in new ways! Preszler reminds us how we have lived alongside evergreens for centuries, and how climate change could impact their future."—Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves

"A revelatory, confronting, and skillfully crafted natural history. At once a tribute to the wonder of trees, and a timely reminder of our urgent environmental responsibilities. Eloquent, elemental, and eye opening."—Callum Robinson, author of Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman