Is there an audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass?

Yes. Braiding Sweetgrass has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Is Braiding Sweetgrass on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Braiding Sweetgrass was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 5, 2026.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer book cover for the Book of the Day nature book review

Our score

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDSeptember 2015

PublisherMilkweed Editions

Genres

Non-Fiction Nature Science

Themes

Reciprocity and gratitude toward the landTwo ways of knowing the living worldThe earth as gift rather than resourceHealing the human relationship with nature

Braiding SweetgrassIndigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Name: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer braids botany and Indigenous wisdom into a luminous case for reciprocity with the living world. Braiding Sweetgrass is a slow, generous book that may quietly change how you see the earth.

The Review

Our take

Robin Wall Kimmerer holds two identities that the modern world tends to keep apart: she is a trained botanist and plant ecologist, and she is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Braiding Sweetgrass is her attempt to weave those ways of knowing together rather than choosing between them. Across a sequence of essays she moves from the cultivation of the Three Sisters to the harvesting of sweetgrass, from the lives of moss and maple to the cleanup of a polluted lake, and in each she sets the precise observation of science beside the older, reciprocity-centered teachings she inherited. The braid of the title is the method as well as the metaphor: science, Indigenous wisdom, and personal memoir wound together into a single supple strand.

The argument underneath the essays is deceptively radical. Kimmerer asks us to see the natural world not as a storehouse of resources to be extracted but as a community of beings offering gifts, and she insists that a gift carries an obligation, that the proper response to the generosity of the land is gratitude and reciprocity rather than consumption. She makes this case not through polemic but through attention, lingering over the particular: the way sweetgrass flourishes only where it is respectfully harvested, the patient architecture of moss, the lessons a stand of pecan trees can teach about abundance and restraint. The science is real and carefully handled; what's unusual is the moral and spiritual frame she allows it to live inside.

The book asks for a particular kind of reading. These are meditations rather than propulsive narratives, and a reader hungry for momentum may find the pace slow and the structure circular, with themes returning and deepening rather than advancing in a straight line. A few essays meander, and the gentle, sermon-adjacent register won't suit everyone; there are moments when the wisdom edges toward the homiletic. Best approached the way Kimmerer herself might suggest, an essay at a time, with room to let each one settle, it rewards patience far more than haste, and the reader who resists the urge to rush is the one it repays most fully.

Why you should read

Readers drawn to reflective, essayistic nature writing
Anyone interested in Indigenous knowledge and ecology
Those wanting a more reciprocal relationship with the land
Lovers of science braided with memoir and ethics

What to expect

Lyrical, meditative essays best read slowly
Botany and Indigenous wisdom woven together
A reflective rather than fast-moving structure
A quietly reorienting view of the natural world

What accumulates over the whole is something rare: a book that doesn't just describe the natural world but reorients your relationship to it. By the final pages the idea of the earth as a giver rather than a given has stopped feeling like a poetic flourish and started to feel like common sense you'd somehow forgotten. It is a work of nature writing and of quiet ethics at once, generous and wise without being naive about the damage we've done, and it has earned the devotion of the many readers who keep pressing it into other people's hands. Read slowly, it can genuinely shift how you walk through the world, leaving you a little more attentive, a little more grateful, and a little less certain that the old extractive habits are the only way to live on the earth.

Reviewed by Ellis · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass?: Yes. Braiding Sweetgrass has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Listen to Braiding Sweetgrass free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
Is Braiding Sweetgrass on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Braiding Sweetgrass was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 5, 2026.

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Common questions

What is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants about?: Robin Wall Kimmerer holds two identities that the modern world tends to keep apart: she is a trained botanist and plant ecologist, and she is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Braiding Sweetgrass is her attempt to weave those ways of knowing together rather than choosing between them…
Is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants worth reading?: We scored Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants 4.6 out of 5. Robin Wall Kimmerer braids botany and Indigenous wisdom into a luminous case for reciprocity with the living world. Braiding Sweetgrass is a slow, generous book that may quietly change how you see the earth.