Grass

A Human History

By: Julia Rosen

A revelatory dive into the overlooked history of grass and the astonishing ways it has shaped human history

Try, if you can, to imagine a world without grass. There would be no lawns or athletic fields, no blooming meadows or rolling wheat fields, no sweeping savannas or steppes. Gone too would be the countless plants and animals that evolved in grassy landscapes: daisies and sunflowers, prairie dogs and bison, zebras, lions, and many more. Oh, and there would be no us—at least not as we exist today.

In Grass Roots, award-winning journalist Julia Rosen unfurls the hidden story of humans and grass, illuminating our deep interconnectedness and our complex, ever-changing relationship. Rosen first reveals how the plant exploded from ecological obscurity to cover roughly 40 percent of Earth’s land, creating the world as we know it. She then traces how grass shaped the evolution of our bodies, minds, and cultures, even sowing the seeds of agriculture and complex civilizations. Humans, in turn, used grass to remake the world, transforming native grasslands into breadbaskets, cultivating immaculate lawns, and releasing invasive grasses that threaten to destroy entire ecosystems.

With curiosity, compassion, and humor, Rosen probes this history, asking what grass—and the stories we tell about it—can teach us about ourselves. In humble grass, we can see why Western society’s belief that humans are separate from and in control of nature is misguided, and how that belief has helped set the world on a path toward ecological and existential crisis. And we can glimpse other ways of relating to nature that are both more honest and more hopeful.

What emerges is a startling portrait of grass through the ages and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of the profound ways that humans and grass have changed the world together. Gorgeously written and deeply researched, Grass Roots reveals what grass can teach us about our place in nature—and how we can reimagine it.