Praise for When the Earth was Green:
“Riley Black shows us how the natural world has always been a splendid, entangled scrum of interactions and transactions...An essential, extraordinary story." —Daniel Lewis, author of Twelve Trees, Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology, Huntington Library
"When the Earth Was Green paints a spellbindingly lush portrait of how plants and animals have shaped the evolution of each other, and the world. Riley Black is a poet of prehistory, narrating the final moments of a gooey mosquito or the accidental, tree-bound voyage of a monkey with the detail of someone who was there and saw it all, millions of years ago. Nobody can bring fossils to life quite like Black, and here she summons all her literary powers and exhaustive research to conjure the pleasures and fears that accompany life on this planet. This is a book steeped with vegetal beauty, one that unfurls like a flower, blooming." —Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches and staff writer at Defector
“Brilliant, brimming with insight, and boundlessly entertaining. Riley Black launches a grand tour of deep time, surveying the influence of plant life on animal evolution (and vice versa). It’s a 1.2 billion year fandango, masterfully chronicled in When the Earth was Green.” —Jason Roberts, author of Every Living Thing and A Sense of the World
Praise for The Last Days of the Dinosaurs:
Winner 2023 AAAS/Subaru Prize for Excellence in Science Writing
"Black blends the intricacies of science with masterful storytelling for a cracking, enchanting read." —Newsweek
"This is top-drawer science writing." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Exquisitely written." —Booklist