Books published by Synergetic Press Inc.,U.S.

Explorations of plant consciousness and human interactions with the natural world. From apples to ayahuasca, coffee to kurrajong, passionflower to peyote, plants are conscious beings. How they interact with each other, with humanity and with the world at large has long been studied by researchers, scientists and spiritual teachers and seekers. The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence brings together works from all these disciplines and more in a collection of essays that highlights what we know and what we intuit about botanical life. The Mind of Plants, featuring a foreword by Dennis McKenna, is a collection of short essays, narratives and poetry on plants and their interaction with humans. Contributors include Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of the New York Times' best seller Braiding Sweetgrass, Jeremy Narby, John Kinsella, Luis Eduardo Luna, Megan Kaminski and dozens more. The book's editors, John C. Ryan, Patricia Vieira and Monica Gagliano - each of whom also contributed works to the collection - weave together essays, personal reflections and poems paired with intricate illustrations by Jose Maria Pout. Recent scientific research in the field of plant cognition highlights the capacity of botanical life to discern between options and learn from prior experiences or, in other words, to think. The Mind of Plants includes texts that interpret this concept broadly. As Mckenna writes in his foreword, "What the reader will find here, expressed in poetry and prose, are stories that are infused with cherished memories and inspired celebrations of unique relationships with a group of organisms that are alien and unlike us in every way, yet touch human lives in myriad ways."

White Gold: The Diary of a Rubber Cutter in the Amazon 1896 - 1906, is a tale of humanity and the natural order working together in the midst of greed and ignorance. The crisis of the Amazon rainforest began more than a century ago when prospectors discovered the region was a rich source for rubber. This brought commercial interests into collision with the Amazon's complex ecology-its plants, animals, and people. At the height of the rubber boom in the beginning of the 20th century, a young American, John Yungjohann, went to seek his fortune as a rubber cutter in Brazil, only to find himself struggling for survival.White Gold's editor, Sir Ghillean Prance, leading expert of the rainforest and former director (emeritus) of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England, has enhanced Yungjohann's text with his own contemporary photographs and identified the fungi, plants and animals mentioned in the pages of the diary. Yungjohann's words are especially poignant today as an onslaught of extractivist policies threaten the Amazon and rain destruction upon the region, its incomprehensible biodiversity, and the peoples to which it is home.

This new volume introduces the Russian-Ukrainian scientist Vladimir I. Vernadsky, largely known in Eastern Europe through his groundbreaking 1926 monograph, The Biosphere.