Earth Day Lecture: David George Haskell - "How Flowers Made our World"

Name: Earth Day Lecture: David George Haskell - "How Flowers Made our World"
Start: 2026-04-22T17:30:00-04:00
Location: Richard B. Russell Jr. Special Collections Libraries Building

Schedule

Wed, 22 Apr, 2026 at 05:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Richard B. Russell Jr. Special Collections Libraries Building | Athens, GA

The writer and biologist David George Haskell will give an Earth Day lecture presented by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the UGA Special Collections Libraries in partnership with the Odum School of Ecology, the department of English, and the Creative Writing Program. The free event is part of the Willson Center's 2026 Global Georgia public events series.
Haskell's next book, How Flowers Made our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries will be published in March 2026. From Haskell:
"When flowers appeared on planet Earth, nothing was ever again the same. In this book, I celebrate the many ways that flowers build, sustain, and animate the living world, human life included. They are the world’s great collaborators and creators. Writing this book transformed how I see life’s history and future, and I’m thrilled to share these stories with you. And, yes, I really mean it when I say revolutionaries. They remade the world, using cooperation, beauty, and illusion to transform the world we live in."
His previous book, Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and The Crisis Of Sensory Extinction (2022), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and a New York Times “Editor’s Choice.” Sounds Wild and Broken explores the story of sound on Earth. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence, diversification, and loss of the sounds of our world, including human music and language.
Haskell's other award-winning books include The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (2012) and The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (2017). He was a 2024 recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
Find more details here: https://calendar.uga.edu/event/earth-day-lecture-david-george-haskell-how-flowers-made-our-world