The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior

Written by Stefano Mancuso

Narrated by Gibson Frazier

"In this thought-provoking, handsomely illustrated book, Italian neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso considers the fundamental differences between plants and animals and challenges our assumptions about which is the ‘higher’ form of life.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Fascinating…full of optimism…this quick, accessible read will appeal to anyone with interest in how plants continue to surprise us.” —Library Journal

Do plants have intelligence? Do they have memory? Are they better problem solvers than people? The Revolutionary Genius of Plants—a fascinating, paradigm-shifting work that upends everything you thought you knew about plants—makes a compelling scientific case that these and other astonishing ideas are all true.

Plants make up eighty percent of the weight of all living things on earth, and yet it is easy to forget that these innocuous, beautiful organisms are responsible for not only the air that lets us survive, but for many of our modern comforts: our medicine, food supply, even our fossil fuels.

On the forefront of uncovering the essential truths about plants, world-renowned scientist Stefano Mancuso reveals the surprisingly sophisticated ability of plants to innovate, to remember, and to learn, offering us creative solutions to the most vexing technological and ecological problems that face us today. Despite not having brains or central nervous systems, plants perceive their surroundings with an even greater sensitivity than animals. They efficiently explore and react promptly to potentially damaging external events thanks to their cooperative, shared systems; without any central command centers, they are able to remember prior catastrophic events and to actively adapt to new ones.

Every page of The Revolutionary Genius of Plants bubbles over with Stefano Mancuso’s infectious love for plants and for the eye-opening research that makes it more and more clear how remarkable our fellow inhabitants on this planet really are. In his hands, complicated science is wonderfully accessible, and he has loaded the book with gorgeous photographs that make for an unforgettable reading experience. The Revolutionary Genius of Plants opens the doors to a new understanding of life on earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781508269052

Stefano Mancuso

Stefano Mancuso is one of the world’s leading authorities in the field of plant neurobiology, which explores signaling and communication at all levels of biological organization. He is the associate professor at the University of Florence in Italy and has published more than 250 scientific papers in international journals.

Reviews for The Revolutionary Genius of Plants

[Vasily · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lots of interesting facts about plants, not widely known because they are not completely understood even by scientists. Among them intelligence, vision and memory, all supported by research and examples of behavior, some of them truly amazing, such as mimicry.

There are also parallels with architecture, robotics and other branches in which plants were used as inspiration. Their evolution is also nothing less of fascinating, not to mention their contribution for our survival and development.

[lewys · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating book, easy listening, well narrated and goes into many topics in things like modern engineering/architecture/travel that stem (pardon the pun) from properties or characteristics that were first found among plant life.
Again, real interesting; even if you're not an avid gardener or anything alike.

[H Brown (hollimatic) · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Plants are genius, this book is not. I couldn't get into all of its logic.

[murderbydeath · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had high hopes for this one, and it started out really strong.  But it lost its momentum after the first few chapters.This is a translation from the original Italian, so I can't be sure there's not some explanation there, but the writing felt oddly defensive, as if it should have been titled In Defence of the Revolutionary Genius of Plants.  It also fell in this weird middle ground of explaining what felt like super obvious basics in a very academic voice.I admit there were some chapters I skimmed, but then things got interesting in chapters 4 and 5, although I got irritated by the failure of reasoning exhibited by the author - which is, to be fair, a very common one.  The chapter concerned the symbiotic and sometimes manipulative relationship between some plants and animals and in the writing he mused on the motivation of the plant to develop such strategies.  I hear/read this type of thing a lot and it drives me nuts; I always picture of room full of whatever - in this case acacias - sitting around pondering, with a whiteboard covered in figures in the background, plans for their future evolutionary development.  I'm not schooled in science, but I do know that's putting the cart before the horse.I was back to skimming towards the end as there was a lot of general lecturing on how applications from the plant world can be applied to solve the industrial world's problems.  There's a little tooting of his own horn too, but to be fair the Jellyfish Barge sounds incredibly cool.  The last chapter on plants in space I skipped completely as I lacked the interest and the attention span to tackle it (it was short and I'm not sorry).A beautifully made book, with some really good information but overall it was just not written (or perhaps translated) in an engaging enough way to keep me glued to the page.

[gshuk_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This gave me a new perspective on plants. It was short and informative.

[librorumamans · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is a translation from the original Italian publisher, so let's begin with the title. Mancuso's book appeared in Italy as "PLANT REVOLUTION : Le piante hanno già inventato il nostro futuro", or something like "Plant revolution : plants have already invented our future". The English title misrepresents the contents and purpose of the book.Mancuso has an impressive international stature as a plant neurobiologist and has written a chatty, accessible discussion of how plants have the potential to provide technological solutions to some of the major challenges that face humanity. His approach is not tightly focused. Thus he uses the first few chapters to show his non-specialist audience how much more sophisticated plants are in their functioning than most people realize and how we would be wise to pay them much more and much different attention than we usually do.The chapters do not link obviously to one another, making the point of the book unclear until close to the end. The final chapters, though, do make it clear that we have used plants' technology in the past (the structure of The Crystal Palace, for example), and we need to do that again.There are a generous number of illustrations, beautifully presented. The book is a quick read and worth the time, but don't expect to understand much about plant intelligence when you finish it.