Richly illustrated with over four hundred color images, How Plants Work: Form, Diversity, Survival (Princeton, $35) is an informative account and a celebration of the complex world of plants. And just as medical practitioners specialize in different parts of the human body, botanist and professor Stephen Blackmore focuses on investigating specific organs and processes in plants. Each section of the book emphases how “deceptively simple” plants are in that they are constructed from very familiar organs: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and cones. But the keynote of the book is its exploration of the diversity of each major organ in order to lay out the plants’ life cycles and reproduction. Blackmore also wants us to be conscious of the role plants play for humanity. He shares his passion for plants and hopes to attract people to look more closely at plants and to understand how diverse and how important they are for our future.