Must Love Trees: An Unconventional Guide

Tobin Mitnick, JewsLoveTrees creator and shameless tree lover, leads you, the tree-curious, through the wonderful world of North American trees with fact, opinion, and humor.

In Must Love Trees, Mitnick invites you to share his deeply personal connection to our forest companions in ways that expand the storied genre of nature writing. From an imagined dialogue with the world’s oldest bristlecone pine, to the minutiae of tree huggability, to the emotional toll of taking up the practice of bonsai, this fresh take into the world of trees is divided into three equally humorous and insightful sections.

The first section discusses Mitnick’s personal opinions and relationship with trees while the second section describes the science behind trees (from tree botany to tree biology to tree ecology). In the final section, Mitnick answers the question: Who would these trees be if they all attended high school together?  Tobin’s detailed description of a tree in action and his thorough run-down of our most-treasured North American trees (all 100 of whom happen to be classmates at “Tree High North America”), makes this compilation an original and occasionally outlandish guide for both the budding and seasoned tree-lover.

Must Love Trees features beautiful drawings of a vast selection of North American trees, including:  
 

• Renowned icons like the Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)
• Beloved favorites like the Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora)  
• Historical tragedies like the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata)
• Menacing creepers like Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix)
• Unsung wonders like the Common Paw-Paw (Asimina triloba)

Part textbook, part memoir, and part comedy, Must Love Trees is the most complete—and most unconventional—story of our forest pals ever told.

Tobin Mitnick is an actor, comedian, and naturalist, widely known as @JewsLoveTrees on social media, where he has over 400,000 followers across platforms, has attracted attention from Wired Magazine (Best TikToks of 2020), the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and other publications for his combination of Mitnick’s love for trees, comedy, and sketch.

For Mitnick, there are infinite ways to appreciate trees; from their rich historical and religious significance, to their critical presence in our future, to their superlative size and age, and even the strange and sometimes hilarious ways that human beings have chosen to interact with them. But while trees are an all-encompassing feature in his own life, he’d like for them to be a small part of everyone’s.

He is an avid runner and marathoner, bonsai practitioner, and Universal Classic Horror Movie enthusiast. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Amanda, and daughter, Lucy.