"What an invigorating way to be reminded of the depth of America's literary and natural heritage!"
- Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
"Once in a decade a book as good as Seeds appears from nowhere to astonish and delight us. This one is about two things - Great American writers and the Great American trees that grew outside their study windows. It might seem an odd pairing at first, but open Richard Horan's high-spirited book and stick with it. Something very remarkable is unfolding here - a breathless tale of Horan's odyssey to collect seeds from the trees that lingered near the homes of his favorite writers. Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes it took as much planning and daring as a bank heist. Horan is a talkative companion, full of comment about writers and trees alike. Some of his tales are full of interesting lore, others are touching, more than a few are funny as hell. By the end of the trip you'll have an itch to read some books or writers you've missed, and to plant some trees on your own."
– Tom Powers, Pulitzer Prize Winner
"Richard Horan has made of trees a lifeline to our past, I mean, to the past that really matters to Americans as a people. Not the past manufactured nonstop on the television, but the past that Americans recognize in the unbowdlerized corners of our hearts. He leads us to the people from whom we have our hearts, writers like Twain and Melville, and places like Mount Vernon and Gettysburg. It is also a past where a tree might be prized, embraced, spoken to. Horan goes personally to find and get to know the trees in these numinous places. As a result, he has adventures, and we have the good luck to accompany him. The pleasures of travel, dendrophilia, literature and history are all richly present in this rare and engaging book. Horan comes to us as a friend, not a teacher, and through intimacy, wins our hearts."
- William Bryant Logan, author Oak: The Frame of Civilization and Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth
"Seeds is more than a book: this sashay across literary America plants a literal sacred grove. And what a traveling companion the big-hearted tie-dyed mash-nosed ex-boxer author makes! From his wonderfully nonacademic footnotes to his rhyming rebuttal of Frost’s pretentious gloom to his charmingly equal love of the Beats and Helen Keller to his sharing of Muir’s fight against the notion “that nature’s only purpose is to provide for stupid human tricks,” Richard Horan sees the cloud floating inside every work of literature. Without the cloud there would be no rain, without the rain no tree, without the tree no paper, without the paper no literary stage upon which language can dance. By not only honoring this cycle, but gathering and preserving it, Horan helps redeem every tree that ever died for our solace and delight."
- David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K, The River Why, and God Laughs & Plays
"Seeds' reads like the best of a roundtable discussion amongst John Muir, Bill Bryson and David Sedaris. From the fields of Gettysburg to the home of Kerouac, Horan takes an unlikely premise and weaves it into a story that's poignant, insightful and unexpectedly humorous. This is more than a book about seeds—it's about literary heroes, forensic forestry and self-discovery."
– Spike Carlson, author of The Splintered History of Wood
"I fully relate to Richard Horan – some of my best childhood friends were trees. Horan's playmate was a cherished red maple in his front yard, whereas apple trees in an abandoned orchard were my companions. In SEEDS, Horan pays homage to famous American writers and the trees of their youth. Horan is a terrific writer, and very funny at times!"
– Amy Goldman, naturalist and author of 3 books on heirloom seeds