Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees
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Book Overview
Here, published for the first time in the United States, is the last book by Roger Deakin, famed British nature writer and icon of the environmentalist movement. In Deakin's glorious meditation on wood, the "fifth element" -- as it exists in nature, in our culture, and in our souls -- the reader accompanies Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with trees. Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bushplums with Aboriginal women in the outback. Along the way, he ferrets out the mysteries of woods, detailing the life stories of the timber beams composing his Elizabethan house and searching for the origin of the apple. As the world's forests are whittled away, Deakin's sparkling prose evokes woodlands anarchic with life, rendering each tree as an individual, living being. At once a traveler's tale and a splendid work of natural history, Wildwood reveals, amid the world's marvelous diversity, that which is universal in human experience.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1416595325
ISBN13:9781416595328
Release Date:December 2010
Publisher:Free Press
Length:416 Pages
Weight:1.35 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 5.9" x 8.9"
Customer Reviews
4 ratings
Blown away
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
My husband said, "Read this book,you will love it." He could not have been more right. I do not know when I have read a book I loved more than this journey around the world of trees. Having grown up in the Midwest, in a little Iowa town full of maple trees and river bottoms, I was so at home in this book I cried when I read the last page. I travel in Britain, particularly Wales, when I can, and have been in some of the ancient groves. I once walked a footpath through the woods near Stackpole, and got so thoroughly lost that when I emerged on a road hours later, it was a terrible shock. I had been in the world of trees. Deakin took me back to that place so thoroughly, that one night at about 3:00 I stopped reading and was surprised to find myself on my couch in front of the fire, I had been so immersed in the walnut trees of Kyrgystan. Roger Deakin is no longer on this earth, but these works of his will endure in the genre of nature writing forever.
tree huggers rejoice
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
Won't someone please, perhaps his friend Robert MacFarlane, go through Deakins papers so this book won't have to be his last? Another excellent book going undeservedly undernoticed and unsung. Believe it or not one of the best chapters is "Among Jaguars"-a chapter on automobiles in a book about trees; I squeal with delight! Find out a great deal about cricket bats and eel traps, and the Green Man, among other fascinating things. Squeezing himself inside a hollow thousand year old holly, full of holes and decay: "Yet the tree was in full foliage and blackbirds were sampling the first of its ripe pink berries." A book to be savored...
Not to Be Missed
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
Deakin's essays on his experiences, since he was a young student, in various woods in his native Great Britain and in numerous other parts of the world among the most eloquent, inspiring, and entertaining natural history essays that I have read. He combines his interest in natural history, myth and legend, the environment, and above all his interactions, and those of others, with wooded areas. This book is not to be missed.
A Very Lyrical Tree Book
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
When I first read an advance review of this book, I knew I had to have it. I'm not a a tree specialist, just a tree-lover. This informative book is written for folks like me. It presents a world-wide perspective of cultural relationships, history and some specific species data. What I loved most is that the author's prose style. This book is so well-written that it carries you along until the last page. I will definitely re-read it several times in the future!
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