The Secret Network of Nature by Peter Wohlleben review - patchy on patterning

This study of mankind's disruption of the natural world is narrow in focus and awkward in tonePeter Wohlleben's bestselling Mysteries of Nature trilogy - The Hidden Life of Trees, The Inner Life of Animals and his latest, The Secret Network of Nature - taps into a very human instinct: pattern recognition. Whether it's the satisfaction that comes from the completed crossword or jigsaw or the perception of previously overlooked linkages and affinities in the functioning of the world, we draw pleasure from perceiving order where once there was chaos.This technique - the revelation of surprising causality - has been employed by many of our most successful authors of popular nonfiction, from Malcolm Gladwell, who applied it to the study of sociology, to Yuval Noah Harari in anthropology and Nassim Nicholas Taleb in economics. Continue reading...