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by: Donald Culross Peattie
List Price: $40.00Amazon.com's Price: $26.40 You Save: $13.60 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 582.16
EAN: 9780618799046
ISBN: 0618799044
Label: Houghton Mifflin
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: April 02, 2007
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Sales Rank: 148445
Studio: Houghton Mifflin
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Donald Culross Peattie's two books about American trees were first published in the 1950s. In this beautiful new one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. More than one hundred of the original illustrations by Paul Landacre highlight the eloquent and entertaining accounts of American trees. As we read Peattie's descriptions, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly.
Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country's history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships.
It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods -- for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot read this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we read his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed.
A Natural History of North American Trees gives us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Breathtakingly Perfect Book for Tree Lovers
How horribly unfair for an earlier reviewer to give this book one star simply because it is an abridged version. Think of how many people will see that review and choose not to read what may be the most perfect book for neophyte dendrologists ever written! Nor is the book for inexperienced tree aficionados only. Even experts will be well served by the books beautiful prose and unabashed emotion, even if only reminds them how best to inspire a love of trees in their students. I already know the ... Read More
Rating:  - Bits and Pieces of a Classic Does Not Equal a Classic
Donald Culross Peattie's two volumes on the natural history of American trees have been rightfully regarded as classic books on their subject for the half-century since they appeared. Peattie's sparkling prose, combined with his scientific understanding and Paul Landacre's elegant woodcuts, remain unequalled in popular American nature writing. This great work deserves to be available to the public.
But what do we get? We get crumbs. Instead of the original 1357 pages of the combined works, this ... Read More
Rating: - Classic still worth reading
This was my introduction to the area of dendrology over 25 years ago. Although a psychobiology major, I went on to take six courses in botany out of an interest in learning more about plants, and I fondly remember how much fun I had learning to identify the trees on my travels in California using this book. Later I learned how to use more systematic keys to identify other plants such as flowers and fungi, but one of the fun things about trees is that, at least in temperate climates, there are relatively ... Read More
Rating: - Beautifully written
This is a lovely book written in the best spirit of natural history. It contains brief (1-5 page) entries on most of the common trees of eastern North America. It is filled with fascinating information about their biology, ecology, and social impact. The best thing about the book however, is Peattie's writing style. You can tell how much he loves these trees simply by the way he writes about them.
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