For readers of Bill Bryson and Ed Yong, a cross-country road trip to America’s ancient trees, reveling in natural wonder and exploring what old trees reveal about our environment, our history, and our future

We often think of ourselves as the stewards of the forests. But since before the spark of civilization, trees have been silent engineers of ecosystems and even shaped human evolution. Trees made us, have sustained us, and we couldn’t survive without them. The problem is we don’t know how to stop killing them.

Journalist Greg Melville set out in his family camper van—nicknamed the Mystery Machine—to see the extraordinary arboreal survivors across the United States while he still could. By car, foot, subway, and canoe, he visits the oldest of the old trees, Methuselah, a 4,857-year-old bristlecone pine, the tallest tree in the world, Hyperion, a 380-foot coast redwood that is between 600 and 800 years old, and the biggest tree, General Sherman, a giant sequoia with a 36-foot diameter. He stops in Austin, Texas, for a famous crime scene, in Utah for the world’s largest living organism in Pando, a quaking aspen clone that covers over 100 acres, and in Manhattan for an unassuming elm tree that predates the United States.

Blending adventurous travel, history, and natural history, Melville explores what happened to America’s trees, wonders at the survivors, and uncovers the lessons they can teach all of us. In Search of Ancient Trees is insightful and entertaining, a walk in the woods like no other.