FOPOS Book Club: The Overstory // 9.26.25

Join Friends of Princeton Open Space (FOPOS) at the Mountain Lakes House for a book club dedicated to readings about conservation, stewardship, and our relationship with nature. New book club members welcome!

Led by Diana Newby, FOPOS board member and Associate Director of Writing at Princeton University, we'll spend our fourth meeting discussing Richard Powers's book The Overstory. Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Overstory gives a sprawling and ambitious account of the interconnectedness of living things, with a particular focus on the complex relationship between humans and trees over multiple generations of American history. Through a rich, interwoven narrative structure that mobilizes multiple protagonists around the common cause of environmental activism, Powers invites readers to reflect on our shared ties and obligations to the well-being of the natural world.

We will spend our first hour discussing The Overstory, sharing impressions, reflections, and points of connection to the mission of FOPOS, as well as our personal relationships with nature. In the last half hour, we will enact the book’s focus on the place of trees in forest ecologies with a Mountain Lakes walking tour that emphasizes FOPOS's work on tree preservation, including a visit to our grove of American Chestnuts.

About FOPOS: Founded in 1969, Friends of Princeton Open Space is a nonprofit organization dedicated to acquiring open space in Princeton for preservation, protecting natural resources, maintaining accessibility to trails, and providing environmental education. As part of our mission, we work with groups in the Princeton region to support efforts to preserve and protect open space and the environment. Since our founding, we’ve helped raise over $7 million to purchase land and conservation easements in Princeton.

Host or Publisher Friends of Princeton Open Space