This is an excellent exploration of how plants evolved and influenced the evolution of animals throughout prehistory.

It is written as a journey to the past, beginning when plants first began to move onto land and then moving forward through the millennia as the nature of plants and animals changed. In each time visited, the plants and animals are brought to life in a vibrant portrait of what life looked like during that time. A hungry mosquito gets stuck in amber. An elderly mastodon crunches through trees, trying to conserve its remaining teeth. It's the next best thing to stepping into a time machine and visiting those times yourself.

My science-loving 11-year-old is absolutely enraptured by this exploration of times past and has loved listening to it at bedtime. He has learned a ton, as have I, listening beside him. On the night we finished the audiobook, before we started, kiddo said "Do you know what we should do when this is finished? We should start over from the beginning." That is a sign of a good audiobook - when he loves it enough to immediately want to experience it again.

The science is fascinating, and the writing is stellar. The combination makes for a truly excellent nonfiction reading experience.

The narrator did a great job bringing life to the text and their voice conveys the emotion and drama of the text beautifully.

Riley Black is absolutely going on my must-read list and kiddo and I will be reading her previous books as soon as possible.

*Thanks to St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for providing an early copy for review.

In this book, the author writes vignettes illustrating the interplay between animals, plants, and the environment from 1.2 billion through 15,000 years ago. An account of a proto-dinosaur’s wanderings around a forest of araucarioxylon trees 220 million years ago details how the conifers thrived in a warming world by growing massive root systems able to withstand frequent wildfires. Describing a jeholornis bird feasting on a magnolia flower 125 million years ago, Black discusses how early birds took to swallowing seeds whole after losing their teeth, helping plants spread farther than they’d previously been able to. The entries emphasize chance’s prominent role in evolution. For example , the author imagines a saber-toothed cat chowing down on catnip and notes that the plant initially evolved to produce the chemical compound that intoxicates felines as a defense against insects, who are repulsed by the substance.

Black writes science for lay readers, weaving illuminating natural history into descriptions of what the Earth was like millions of years ago. The book is an excellent look at a time when earth was in the process of becoming earth. I like the author’s imagination in her descriptions of how life became alive on earth.

I have never read anything by Riley Black before and I was pleasantly surprised. She told me things about the past in a way that didn't make me feel stupid. I could almost imagine all the creatures she was writing about. And then I read the Conclusion, and I just loved this book and Riley even more. I learned more than I ever thought I could have.

This one is very interesting. How she explained to bring things prehistorically and how she related this to the different flowers animals. Each chapter had something about the time frame in the past Very interesting how she have different continents and it was pretty interesting. She also tied it in with the modern times too.So you've gotten like two perspectives on the ideas. This book would be really interested in to read at a college level. Especially Earth s Science. You could do a whole course on this book with other books because it would make it very interesting. I specially like the plant selection.Cause I can really relate to that Great book.

When the Earth Was Green is a well written, layman accessible monograph on biosphere evolution on Earth by Riley Black. Released 25th Feb 2025 by Macmillan on their St. Martin's Press imprint, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.

The author's enthusiasm is contagious. She writes realistically of the freezing, baking, bug infested, unpleasant, inhospitable, sometimes dangerous realities involved in the field work of paleontology. In the end, it all comes down to passion for the work (described almost like a gambling addiction - for science!), stubbornness, and luck (mostly luck). There's a fair amount of humor as well in her writing.

Along with the field descriptions, there's a lot of engaging background science, delivered in accessible, digestible bites. It's not a graphically engaging book, there are no pictures, maps, or diagrams in the review copies. It's also not at all academically stilted. The chapter notes are minimal and there aren't any annotations. The reference chapter is limited, but provides enough sources for further reading to keep keen readers engaged for a while. There are a number of interesting appendices as well.

It's aimed at an adult audience, but paleontology mad adolescents will likely find a lot to love here as well. 12 year old me would've been in raptures.

Four stars. Well reasoned and engaging. Philosophical and moving in places. Definitely worth a look for natural science readers/fans.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Ooooo! Paleontology! Fossils! Dinosaurs,sabertooth cats, pterodactyls!!!

Yoo-hoo, what about plants???

Riley Black is here to give us glimpses of the history of plants and their relationships with animals - and soil and atmosphere – because they are all intertwined. She does this through a series of vignettes chosen to illustrate the hows and whys of changes in ecosystems over millions of years. There are enlightening sections on photosynthesis, pollination, fosillzation, among other topics, like catnip. Then there are a long series of appendices. Don’t skip them. You’ll miss out on why each era, plant and/or animal was chosen, as well as recent research. Best of all, it shares some of the process of organizing and writing the book. Black is very good at both writing and educating.

When the Earth Was Green is written in a series of vignettes focusing on an era and type of plant life and its interconnectedness with life all around it. Each chapter reads like its own mini documentary video and gave me David Attenborough vibes. While I really liked that, I still felt like some of this was over my head. I think this would be a great reading in the spring for people who love natural history and want a shorter nonfiction book!

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for the e-ARC!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

I can totally picture this as a BBC documentary with a soothing voice describing each of the scenarios in this book. The way Black not only explains the relationship between plant and animal evolution over billions of years, but prescribes vivid images of what it could have been like back then, based on the fossil records we are left with today. My one gripe is that the descriptions are almost too much like a soothing narrator of a nature documentary because I was putting myself to sleep at times.

“Life did not just live on the planet. Life changed the planet. Photosynthesis changed the world.”

This narrative nonfiction book explores the relationships between prehistoric flora and fauna in a series of vignettes that span from the earliest life on earth through to the ice ages. I found these snippets engaging and informative. In some ways, they reminded me of Rachel Carson’s earlier works like Under the Sea-Wind. A couple moments that stood out for me were the sections describing Apatosaurus, mosquitoes trapped in amber, and mastodons. It was interesting to learn about the constant push-and-pull between plants and animals across time.

“Through and through plants embody hope that cannot be suppressed and had no choice but to try to thrive, even in the most hostile of places.”

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advance reader copy of this book.

When the Earth Was Green by Riley Black is truly a love letter to evolution. By bringing the past to life in poetic short vignettes following plants and animals of a specific slice of time, Black explains how random mutations that give an advantage cause adaptations in both. These adaptations, however, are only good for the small scale timeline rather than the geologic in which the Earth has experienced a multitude of climate changes. Each slice of time jumps a few million years and Black reintroduces some of the cast in later timelines, showing just how changed they have become. The plants and animals here really could be any, but the dance remains the same. The push and pull of ecological stress and success is a wonder to behold over the timelines that Black gives us.

I really enjoyed this book, with extremely poetic descriptions of plant and animal life, the author really puts you into the time and place they are explaining. And in the conclusion, the parallels between the diversity of plants and the diversity of queerness is beautiful. I think my one critique of the book is that I would have liked pictures of the named species so I could imagine them better. I was furiously googling most of the time to really see what I was reading about. But really, this book is a must for any who are curious about the natural world and how much life plants really have.

When the Earth Was Green is the second book I've read by Riley Black. I also really enjoyed The Last Days of the Dinosaurs. This time, Black gives us a look at the history of plant life on Earth.

Each chapter gives us a look at a period in time where plant life has evolved to support unique evolution on land. Beginning at a stunning 1.2 billion years ago, Black manages to bring to life these unique moments in history where evolution was paving the way for a variety in abundance of life. When the Earth Was Green isn't all about plants, and many species make an appearance during these snapshots in time.

While I do love paleo nonfiction, I never expected to enjoy one about plants. The evolutionary history of plants - the beautiful greenery all around us, that gives us air to breathe - which I rarely stop to think about beyond imagining lush forests filled with dinosaurs. When the Earth Was Green made me reflect on just how special the circumstances were to create life on our planet, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I especially enjoyed the Appendix, which elaborates on the research and scientific facts, but also educated guesses, involved in Black's process for writing each chapter.

Overall, this is an accessible read that is informative and interesting, and I highly recommend this to anyone curious about paleobotany and how plants shaped life on Earth. 4 stars, I will definitely continue to pick up more of Riley Black's work.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the copy of the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

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I don’t normally read nonfiction but this book got my interest. It’s about how plants support life throughout time. It started at prehistoric times, with dinosaurs and then saber tooth tigers. I really learned a great deal about how plants protect themselves and how they evolved over time.
If you are looking for an interesting read, this book is for you! I will definitely read a few sections of this to my students, I think they will like it! Many thanks to the author, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.
#WhenTheEarthWasGreen #RileyBlack #NetGalley #Nonfiction #BookLove #Bookstagram #NewBook #ILoveBooks #BooksAboutPlants

Enjoyed from first to last page.A well written informative walk through nature.A book I will be recommending.#netgalley #st.martins

Riley Black's WHEN THE EARTH WAS GREEN: PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND EVOLUTION'S GREATEST ROMANCE was an enthralling plunge into the history of life on earth, highlighting the interactions and connections between plants and animals and how the interplay has shaped life as we know it. From the opening quote by William Blake stating "The tree that moves some to tears of joy is to others a green thing that stands in the way.," I dropped into an articulate and perspective-expanding exploration of fossils, history, and wonders I've never known. I deeply enjoyed Black's writing style, twining accessible and personable with concepts and theories I've not gone near since I was in college. I felt like I was there on the outcrops, scrabbling around searching for clues to the way that things used to be -- and how we got from there to here. I received a copy of this book and these thoughts are my own, unbiased opinions.

Thank you to NetGAlley, the publisher and the author for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I loved this book, I can see where some people may have a little difficulty with it, but I was happy with the writing, it felt like I was walking through the book.

Felt like I was walking through a museum. I could picture everything, but sometimes the writing was just so dense that I struggled to enjoy it. I appreciated the book, but I didn’t always enjoy it.
Still fascinating information, though!

I was thoroughly enthralled by this nature book that seeks to depict what grew and moved on Earth from 1.2 billion years ago to nearly the present, i.e. 15,000 years ago. In Riley Black's own words: 'I've written this book as a series of unfolding vignettes that speak to how animal and land life have changed each other through the ages.' The Appendix to the book goes back over each chapter, explaining why they chose the plants and animals they did for each period of time.

Two things that became abundantly clear to me while reading the vast history of our planet is how unimportant we are and that life on Earth will go on long after we are gone.

Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this astounding new book via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own. I will have to check out the book when it is published to see the artwork by Kory Bing that wasn't included in my arc. I have to say I feel a bit cheated. :-)

If you’re like me then when you think about paleontology, you think about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have an enduring place in our collective imaginations, and dinosaur fossils are great for drawing people into museums. I remember when Sue, named after it’s discoverer Sue Henderson, first came to Chicago’s Field Museum.

Sue, if you are not familiar, is one of the best-preserved sets of fossilized Tyrannosaurus Rex bones ever found. Paleontologists set up work in labs on the Museum’s main floor, where visitors could watch through glass walls as they went through the painstaking work of extracting the bones from the rock they were embedded in, and had been transported to the museum still inside of. The fully assembled display resulting from their work was a huge hit when it debuted in mid-2000.

While there are plenty of dinosaurs in Riley Black’s latest book When the Earth Was Green, it’s the plants and their evolution that dominates the story she spins. Well, stories really, as the book is an episodic walk through the shared evolution of plants and animals across Earth’s history.

That sounds like an ambitious goal for a book - to tell the story of plants and animals across the whole history of the world, and it is. The remarkable thing is that Black does an admirable job of it, while still keeping to a thoroughly readable book at just over 300 pages.

It’s common now, with our modern environmentalist understanding, to speak about the interactions between the different species of plants and animals in a given environment, and the dependencies they have on one another. Coexistence Theory, as it’s called, tries to understand how competitive and cooperative traits and behaviors among various plants and animals in a given environment can result in a stable equilibrium.

But when most of us think about dinosaurs and other extinct animals like saber tooth tigers or wooly mammoths, and when we visit museums to see fossils or recreations of such animals, the animals themselves are the stars of the show, and the plants in their environment fade into the background.

Black’s book is a corrective to that. In each of her stories, spaced across time, Black shows us both the plants and the animals, and digs into how they depended on one another. The symbiosis between plants and animals in changing environments across earth’s history is the “romance” spoken of in the book’s subtitle.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. While Black doesn’t shy away from formal names for species and includes some scientific detail, she also has a great knack for storytelling that makes this book perfect for the armchair scientist inside of us. Each of her stories visits a specific time and place, starting from the earliest and moving up to almost the present day. If you have an interest in the times before humans, when all the world was green and species of animals now extinct ruled, I think you’d find this to be a great read.

A gorgeous book, an enriching experience. Nominally it’s the story of plant life on earth from the very very earliest beginnings to today. There’s no illustrations in the ARC that was given me by Netscape in exchange for an unbiased review. I suppose if there were, they’d mostly be black and white photos of fossils but Riley Black’s descriptions are so vibrant and lively that photos would be superfluous. One of the enchanting things about the writing is that all the critters are described as female, which makes perfect sense because who after all gives birth and does most of the nurturing? And of course the life cycle is part of the tale that is to be told in this saga of things eating and things being eaten. An extensive appendix reviews the paleontology behind this riveting story.

When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance by Riley Black is love letter to vegetation of the Earth that has driven, enhanced and allowed for the great evolutionary leaps of all life. Black's writing is engaging giving the reader a clear vision with interconnected vignettes easy for a layperson like myself to understand.

I was lucky to be able to listen to the audio first and then read the book as well. The rich appendices provide great insight to the process and methods for this amazing narrative and I encourage the users to not skip this section.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook. All opinions are my own.