Forestry Books

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

Richard Preston

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the largest and tallest organisms the world has ever sustained–the coast redwood trees, Sequoia sempervirens. Ninety-six percent of the ancient redwood forests have been destroyed by logging, but the untouched fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods have trunks up to thirty feet wide and can rise more than thirty-five stories above the ground, forming cathedral-like structures in the air. Until recently, redwoods were thought to be virtually impossible to ascend, and the canopy at the tops of these majestic trees was undiscovered. In The Wild Trees, Richard Preston unfolds the spellbinding story of Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine, and the tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists that found a lost world above California, a world that is dangerous, hauntingly beautiful, and unexplored.

The canopy voyagers are young–just college students when they start their quest–and they share a passion for these trees, persevering in spite of sometimes crushing personal obstacles and failings. They take big risks, they ignore common wisdom (such as the notion that there’s nothing left to discover in North America), and they even make love in hammocks stretched between branches three hundred feet in the air.

The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems that have fused and formed flying buttresses, sometimes carved into blackened chambers, hollowed out by fire, called “fire caves.” Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life that is unknown to science. Humans move through the deep canopy suspended on ropes, far out of sight of the ground, knowing that the price of a small mistake can be a plunge to one’s death.

Preston’s account of this amazing world, by turns terrifying, moving, and fascinating, is an adventure story told in novelistic detail by a master of nonfiction narrative. The author shares his protagonists’ passion for tall trees, and he mastered the techniques of tall-tree climbing to tell the story in The Wild Trees–the story of the fate of the world’s most splendid forests and of the imperiled biosphere itself.


From the Hardcover edition.

Understanding Wood: A Craftsman's Guide to Wood Technology

R. Bruce Hoadley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Must have for Woodworkers 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you want to get to the "next level" in woodworking, this book will help you get there. Good all around read on the properties of the various species , but written from a woodworkers perspective. Covers species identification, kiln drying, steam bending as well as adhesives and finishing. Practical knowlege and a very good resource. If you want to move from building birdhouses to fine furniture, you'll want to buy a copy of this book.

Critical information for the beginning woodworker. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I would consider myself new to woodworking, but not a complete novice. I have read a few books about the principles of woodworking, and all of them contained very little information about the nature of wood. These books left me with many questions about why certain methods are used or when to use one method over another. Understanding Wood answered a lot of my questions. Most importantly I now understand how to take into consideration the nature of wood when I am planning a project. The most important thing that I learned in this book was about the importance of moisture content. Sure I knew that wood expands or contracts with humidity levels, but now I know how to plan for it and work with it and I also know how detrimental it can be if you don't consider the relationship between water and wood.

What I really liked about the book is that the author did not pull any punches in his exposition meaning that this is not written for someone who prefers a "for dummies" book. This is the real deal, it contains some equations, it has many tables and graphs. Don't be too intimidated though, because it is not as dense or dry as a standard textbook. I think for anyone who enjoys woodworking this would be a great read.

My only complaint is that I wish the author could've gone into more detail on a lot of the subjects. He often wrote that a detailed discussion would fill a whole other book or even volumes. The problem is he's right, so the trade off is that some information is left out since the book can't be thousands of pages long.

Editorial Review:

In this essential reference for woodworkers, R. Bruce Hoadley explains everything from how trees grow to how best to cut, season, machine, join, bend, and finish wood. Why do miters open and glue joints loosen? How do you get a really sharp edge? Examples of problems and solutions help woodworkers puzzle through their own projects, while 325 full-color photos and helpful tables illustrate key points. Updated information on composite materials, adhesives, and finishes included.

Young Men & Fire

Norman MacLean

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 79 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great book 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Any book that I spend a great deal of time checking maps and names, to see who survived, has hooked me. This did. The horror has caused much thought. Check out the song "Cold Missouri Water"

Young Men and Fire 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a book written about a fire that took place in Montana back in the 1940's during which a group of smoke jumpers lost their lives. It is so well written that I found it difficult to put down. This was the beginning of the study of "fire", and all it's elements, as a science. Fascinating. This particular book is being used as required reading in our local "California Department of Fire" CDF. I read it as an adjunct to the Search and Rescue Team to which I belong. I recommend this to anyone, especially those living in a possible fire danger area.

A Must Have 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is the quintessential non-fiction account of Mann Gulch. It creates the foundation of our study of wild fire behavior. I could not turn the pages fast enough. Many quotable descriptions and observations about the firefighting industry is timelessly captured in this book.

Editorial Review:

This National Book Critics Circle Award-winner is a riveting account of the Mann Gulch fire, its aftermath, and Maclean's 14-year investigation of the fatal fire. 4 cassettes.

Rainforest

Ben Morgan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Amazing Photography 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Worth more than what you will pay, the images are pristinely clear, colorful, large, and just plain amazing. I am giving it to my 11 year old animal-loving son for Christmas, but I must confess, I want my own!

Breathtaking 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Even people who aren't as avid about nature as I am have found this book to be simply spectacular. It was given to me as a Christmas present and promptly got passed around the room. People who only take a glance have bought their own copy! The large, professionally printed photographs will take your breath away, and the captions and stories are just as entertaining. This book is organized neatly into chapters, and its layout is stylish and modern.

Editorial Review:

Thomas Marent, a self-taught photographer who has dedicated half his life to capturing images of rainforest life, tells the story of his journey through these spectacular photographs. Join him as he travels across five continents for an up-close view of the astonishing variety and fascinating behavior of rainforest plants and trees, reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, and mammals.

Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England

Tom Wessels

List Price: $24.95 By: Countryman Press Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $17.75

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The woods are lovely... 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Before I read this book, I knew the woods had stories to tell; now, I can begin to understand them. This book is a forensic reference demystifying the clues the forest has to reveal. Each chapter describes, in depth, a particular setting and the clues found there. The drawings, unfortunately, are not as good or helpful as the writing. I would have preferred photographs, but it's only a small drawback.

Editorial Review:

Landscape is much more than scenery to be observed or even terrain to be traveled, as this fascinating and many-layered book vividly shows us. Etched into the land is the history of how we have inhabited it, the storms and fires that have shaped it, and its response to these and other changes. An intrepid sleuth and articulate tutor, Wessels teaches us to read a landscape the way we might solve a mystery. What exactly is the meaning of all those stone walls in the middle of the forest? Why do beech and birch trees have smooth bark when the bark of all other northern species is rough? How do you tell the age of a beaver pond and determine if beavers still live there? Why are pine trees dominant in one patch of forest and maples in another? What happened to the American chestnut? Turn to this book and no walk in the woods will ever be the same.

The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed

John Vaillant

Amazon Price: $14.35 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 68 new & used starting at $4.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth. "Absolutely spellbinding."—William Grimes, New York Times

As vividly as Jon Krakauer put readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest, where trees grow to eighteen feet in diameter, sunlight never touches the ground, and the chainsaws are always at work.

When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.

The tree, a fascinating puzzle to scientists, was sacred to the Haida, a fierce seafaring tribe based in the Queen Charlottes. Vaillant recounts the bloody history of the Haida and the early fur trade, and provides harrowing details of the logging industry, whose omnivorous violence would claim both Hadwin and the golden spruce. 16 pages of illustrations.

Remarkable Trees of the World

Thomas Pakenham

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A stunning volume" (Time) and the most magnificent book on the world's trees published in years.

The publication of Remarkable Trees of the World took American audiences by storm. Now in a handsome paperback volume with flaps, Thomas Pakenham embarks on a five-year odyssey to most of the temperate and tropical regions of the world to photograph sixty trees of remarkable personality and presence: Dwarfs, Giants, Monuments, and Aliens; the lovingly tended midgets of Japan; the enormous strangler from India; and the 4,700-year "Old Methusalehs." American readers will be fascinated by Pakenham's first examination of North American trees, including the towering Redwoods of Sequoia and Yosemite, the gaunt Joshua Trees of Death Valley and the Bristlecone pines discovered in California's White Mountains.

Many of these trees were already famous-champions by girth, height, volume or age-while others had never previously been caught by the camera. Pakenham's five-year odyssey, sweating it out with a 30 pound Linhof camera and tripod, took him to most of the temperate and many of the tropical regions of the world. Although North American trees dominate this book, Pakenham also trekked to remote regions in Mexico, all over Europe, parts of Asia including Japan, northern and southern Africa, Madagascar, Australia and New Zealand.

Remarkable Trees of the World is a lavish work that will be treasured for generations by all those who marvel at nature. Color photographs throughout.

American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree

Susan Freinkel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The American chestnut was one of America's most common, valued, and beloved trees--a "perfect tree" that ruled the forests from Georgia to Maine. But in the early twentieth century, an exotic plague swept through the chestnut forests with the force of a wildfire. Within forty years, the blight had killed close to four billion trees and left the species teetering on the brink of extinction. It was one of the worst ecological blows to North America since the Ice Age--and one most experts considered beyond repair. In American Chestnut, Susan Freinkel tells the dramatic story of the stubborn optimists who refused to let this cultural icon go. In a compelling weave of history, science, and personal observation, she relates their quest to save the tree through methods that ranged from classical plant breeding to cutting-edge gene technology. But the heart of her story is the cast of unconventional characters who have fought for the tree for a century, undeterred by setbacks or skeptics, and fueled by their dreams of restored forests and their powerful affinity for a fellow species.

Wildwood Wisdom

Ellsworth Jaeger

By: Random House Inc (P) Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $25.30

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Outdoor handbook 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I first read this book in my High School Library in 1955.
The best outdoor survival book ever.
Buy it at least a month before you go camping.
Must read for campers.

GREAT BOOK 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

THE BEST OUTDOOR/SURVIVAL BOOK I HAVE EVER READ. LOADED WITH INFORMATION, AND AT A GIVE AWAY PRICE OF ABOUT 10 BUCKS. ITS A NO BRAINER, BUY THIS BOOK.

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

All outdoorsmen should own a copy of this book. Highly entertaining and a wealth of knowledge.

awesome book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is crammed full of good survival and outdoor information. Its also full of awesome drawings. This is one of my favorite outdoor books and has been for many years, i find myself coming back to it again and again. Buy it, you wont regret it.

Wildwood Wisdom 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

A great book with much of interest to anyone interested in outdoor skills and woodsman ship in an age that has mostly vanished. The illustrations are great and some are humorous as well.

A Field Guide to Eastern Forests: North America (Peterson Field Guides (R))

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Introducing the Eastern Forest 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

The purpose of this guide is not to assist one in identifying species of flora and fauna found in the Eastern Forest--such a tome would be monumental in size--but rather to instill in the reader an understanding of the forest's general dynamics. The book is divided into eight sections; they are:

1) How to use this book
2) Forest field marks
3) Eastern forest communities
4) Disturbance and pioneer plants
5) Adaptation
6) Paterns of spring
7) Nature in summer
8) Autumn and winter

This book is an excellent beginning point for those who want to develope a better understanding of forest ecology. I highly recommend it.

How things really work 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Though this guide and its companion Western forest edition have been in print for over a decade, I only stumbled on it last year. It concisely provides the missing links between other field guides to plants, fungi, insects, spiders, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, tracks, fossils ... you get the drift. As a hiker, bird-watcher or -feeder, observer, photographer or amateur naturalist, the first step is usually simple identification of species. (With summer warblers, of course, the first step is actually seeing the bird in question.) In the same way that traditional field guides provide portable I.D. info, the ECOLOGY version helps you understand the change you see as you hike down out of a Beech-Maple forest into an Oak-Hickory stand, or the subtle differences when a Northern Riverine Forest segues into a Northern Swamp. By no means comprehensive (remember this fits in your pocket), this book, like the science of ecology itself, is composed of seemingly endless delightful digressions. Where do galls come from? How do dragonflies mate? Have you ever bothered to learn frog calls? What can the vegetation in an old field tell you about history? This volume (and by my inference the Western companion) are an excellent and fascinating addition to any field guide collection.

Editorial Review:

This field guide includes all the flora and fauna you're most likely to see in the forests of eastern North America. With 53 full-color plates and 80 color photos illustrating trees, birds, mammals, wildflowers, mushrooms, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies, moths, beetles, and other insects.