American Canopy

Author: Eric Rutkow
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Scribner, 2012
Pages: 406
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Eric Rutkow’s “deeply fascinating” (The Boston Globe) work shows how trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country’s rise as both an empire and a civilization. Among American Canopy’s many captivating stories: the Liberty Trees, where colonists gathered to plot rebellion against the British; Henry David Thoreau’s famous retreat into the woods; the creation of New York City’s Central Park; the great fire of 1871 that killed a thousand people in the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin; the fevered attempts to save the American chestnut and the American elm from extinction; and the controversy over spotted owls and the old-growth forests they inhabited. Rutkow also explains how trees were of deep interest to such figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, who oversaw the planting of some three billion trees nationally in his time as president.

Never before has anyone treated our country’s trees and forests as the subject of a broad historical study, and the result is an accessible, informative, and thoroughly entertaining read. Audacious in its four-hundred-year scope, authoritative in its detail, and elegant in its execution, American Canopy is perfect for history buffs and nature lovers alike and announces Eric Rutkow as a major new author of popular history.

Review: I have an irrational fear of trees. Some trees don't both me at all like the blue spruce sentinels strategically placed in my front yard. Merely the sight of others makes my pulse race and fill me with a fear that I don't even find while walking in dark alleys at night (not that I do this often, or at all).

I don't understand this fear, and I've certainly had many people laugh at me over this fear. Nonetheless, I have an incredible desire to see the tallest trees in the world. Partly because I don't think a photograph can do them justice, and partly because I want to see how I react to them. Can we say moth to flame?

I am trying to understand this irrational fear. Why some trees send me into a near panic attack, and others are mundane and I barely notice their presence.

I don't know if this book gave me a new appreciation for the trees that raise my blood pressure. But, this book is history told from the standpoint of how trees affected the growth and development of the United States. It's a brand new way of studying American History, and adds another layer as to how different historical events are all tied together.

It took a long time (nearly 2 weeks) to read this book, and my fiance asked me if it's because it was dry. It was not dry. It was actually very interesting, and gave me new perspective. Perhaps this book is to be savored like the first fresh fruit of the season, grown on one of America's trees. The author sums it up perfectly, "No one has ever treated American trees in all their dimensions as a subject for historical study."