The Serviceberry

Compelling ... A moving meditation on what a giving tree can teach us about building a fairer society

TIME

A gorgeous meditation on reciprocity and abundance in nature ... a lyrical call to action

Oprah Daily

The time you’ll spend reading this book will, like the time spent picking wild berries, nourish your soul, heart, and mind. I hope to give this book to everybody

Anthony Doerr

A sweet reminder of our interdependence

The New York Times Book Review

An uplifting, open-hearted little book that asks us to reframe our relationships in the world as ones of easy generosity. To be wealthy, explains Robin Wall Kimmerer, is to have enough to share: give all that you have, and take only what you need

Cal Flyn

A masterful reflection on ecology and culture … startling in its simplicity. Kimmerer invites readers to envision a life that embraces the gift economy—one built on reciprocity, collective well-being, and care … Her beautiful and hopeful prose leaves readers feeling sated, galvanized, and keenly aware of the world around them

Kirkus

The Serviceberry is a gem of a book. It invites us to think again about economics, and imagine another way of relating to one another based on generosity, kindness, interconnectedness, and restraint. The book reminds us that how we think, and the stories we tell, shape how we live – and it’s high time we thought and lived differently, with new stories, about our place in nature.

James Rebanks

This wise little book asks us to escape our doomed extractive economy, learning from the cooperative circularity of living systems and the sustainable stewardship of indigenous cultures

Gaia Vince

Robin Wall Kimmerer's call to accommodate ecology and moneyless exchange into our economics is beautiful, radical and true. Her persuasive argument is a gift in itself

Philip Marsden

Lyrical, personable … invites readers into worlds of possibility … this sweet offering builds on Kimmerer’s ideas about the gift economy and how Indigenous wisdom might inform it

Meera Subramanian, Scientific American

At once incredibly simple and incredibly profound - a real gift

Caroline Lucas

A meditation on communing with nature and cultivating connections with one another … Kimmerer makes a convincing argument, wrapped in beautiful language and vivid imagery

Washington Post

The Serviceberry shows us the gift economy in action in rural and in urban settings – it is a source of powerful inspiration, and an essential read. It offers each of us a way to navigate, lovingly and practically, the dark times in which we’re living and in so doing, creating a matrix of healing

Jini Reddy

Kimmerer’s warm, inviting style feels like you are having a conversation as you pick serviceberries… the book offers a good dose of optimism and encouragement, which makes it a lovely read and a potentially transformative one

New Scientist

Vivid and poetic, and also fierce … an elegant distillation of some of Kimmerer’s political ideas

Observer

A wonderful little book which imagines a kinder, sharing world where everybody has enough to eat and nature is respected and cherished

Dave Goulson

Vivid and poetic, and also fierce… An elegant distillation of Kimmerer’s political ideas

Guardian

The Serviceberry builds on the blend of Indigenous and western ecological thought that has made Kimmerer – unexpectedly – one of the best known environmental writers working today … The book is a call to action for ordinary people everywhere

Guardian

It’s a short, tart, powerful book - much like the berry it is named after

Pandora Sykes

In The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer has given us a lucid, clear-eyed, perspective-shifting manifesto for creating gift economies and realising the abundance of the earth's gifts. She challenges bogus mindsets of scarcity while proffering joy, wonder and relationship. This is a taut, short Trojan horse of radical love and radical thinking I'll return to again and again. If those in power read and truly understand this book, our world could look very different. The Serviceberry world is the world I want to live in

Lucy Jones

A small book with a profound impact

Angeline Boulley, Good Morning America, '10 Books to Read this Native American Heritage Month'

The Serviceberry picks up where Braiding Sweetgrass left off, once again using the interconnectedness of nature as a guiding light to reimagine a path forward for the future… The message of The Servicceberry is clear: Our individualistic, pro-competition, consumption-focused capitalist economy is inherently flawed and is leading us down a destructive and lonely path…Kimmerer creates a bighearted version of millions of little circular economies in which people learn how to foster kinship, 'recognize enoughness,' and appreciate what Mother Earth provides

The San Francisco Chronicle

The Serviceberry is a psalm for the natural world and a profound exploration of how we can reframe our relationship with nature and with others through gift economies… Kimmerer’s blend of scientific observation, memoir, and philosophical reflection makes The Serviceberry a compelling read that transcends mere ecological treatise. As our planet grapples with environmental challenges, Kimmerer’s vision of a non­extractive, reciprocal relationship with nature offers a necessary alternative

Sierra Magazine

The Serviceberry is bound to appeal to the readers who made Braiding Sweetgrass a more-than-2-million-copies-sold phenomenon. Like Braiding Sweetgrass, The Serviceberry draws on traditional Native ways of caring for the land (Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation). And, like Braiding Sweetgrass, it uses plain language to demonstrate truths about the way all of us live in the world

Minnesota Star Tribune

A novella-length meditation on the abundance that sharing and mutual exchange can create…The Serviceberry continues a long tradition of naturalistic writing about interdependence in the wild…an impassioned call not just to return to the natural webs of exchange that are our birthright‚ but to recapture the fulfillment that stems from interdependence

Undark Magazine

Under a hundred pages, The Serviceberry is beautifully written with illustrations by John Burgoyne. Like me, you might pass the afternoon reading the book in one sitting, entranced by the author’s hopeful words for how to combat ecological destruction and the isolation and purposelessness so many people experience in this digitally oriented, self-interested world

Chicago Review of Books

Certain to be acclaimed as one of the best books of the year

Parade

A delightful new book that reflects on the natural world and how we can derive lessons on gratitude, reciprocity and community to flourish mutually

Seattle Times

Drawing from both Indigenous knowledge and ecological science, Robin Wall Kimmerer, known for her masterwork Braiding Sweetgrass, demonstrates how serviceberries support biodiversity while having historically provided sustenance to Native American communities… Through careful observation of serviceberry ecology, Kimmerer constructs a compelling case for economic systems based on reciprocity

Forbes

Kimmerer’s deeply rooted, wise, and inspiring reflections coalesce into a fresh approach to connecting ecology, economics, and ethics… [Readers] will learn a lot about ecological ways of living from Kimmerer's nature-rooted wisdom and beautifully clear writing

Booklist, starred review

An eloquent call to action

Publishers Weekly