We're in the middle of the dog days of summer, and plants and trees are reaching their full peak. Leaves, fruit, bark, twigs, branches—you name it—will fall from trees, which can be a hassle to clean ...

Humanity has in some senses advanced a lot, but as this excerpt from “The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World” shows, in some ways we, like proverbial apples, aren’t ...