American Canopy - by Eric Rutkow (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This fascinating and groundbreaking work tells the remarkable story of the relationship between Americans and their trees across the entire span of our nation's history.

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 Quotes

"For those who see our history through the traditional categories of politics, economics, and culture, a delightful feast awaits. In this remarkably inventive book, Eric Rutkow looks at our national experience through the lens of our magnificent trees, showing their extraordinary importance in shaping how we lived, thrived, and expanded as a people. A beautifully written, devilishly original piece of work." --David Oshinsky, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Both delightful and enlightening--a book filled with fascinations and surprises about a subject I had never though about (much less read about) before. That it's written with such charm and grace only intensifies its appeal." --Daniel Okrent, bestselling author of Last Call

"American Canopy marks the debut of an uncommonly gifted young historian and writer. Ranging across four centuries of history, Eric Rutkow shows the manifold ways in which trees--and woodland--and wood--have shaped the contours of American life and culture. And because he has managed to build the story around gripping events and lively characters, the book entertains as much as it informs. All in all, a remarkable performance!" --John Demos, Bancroft Prize winner and National Book Award finalist

"In American Canopy, Eric Rutkow works a wonderful magic. He takes the most obvious of things--trees--and weaves an astounding and complex narrative that ranges across American history." --S.C. Gwynne, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell

"Right from its quietly shocking prelude--the cavalier and surprisingly recent murder of the oldest living thing in North America--Eric Rutkow's splendid saga shows, through a chain of stories and biographical sketches that are intimate, fresh, and often startling, how trees have shaped every aspect of our national life. Here is the tree as symbol and as tool, as companion and enemy, as a tonic for our spirits and the indispensable ingredient of our every enterprise from the colonization voyages to the transcontinental railroad to Levittown. The result, both fascinating and valuable, is a short of shadow history of America. Toward the end of his finest novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes that the 'vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.' American Canopy retrieves those trees and does full-rigged (on tall, white-pine masts) justice to the dream." --Richard Snow, author of Iron Dawn

"Broad-ranging, engaging...[Rutkow's] stories yield an original and often surprising take on American history." --The Wall Street Journal

"A deeply fascinating survey of American history through a particularly interesting angle." --Anthony Doerr, The Boston Globe

"Rutkow is clearly enraptured by his topic and, like another great popular historian, David McCullough, has a knack for making the reader enraptured as well. He tells history's story as just that: a story, not a boring lecture." --The Chicago Tribune

"Rutkow has cut through America's use and love of trees to reveal the rings of our nation's history and the people who have helped shape it." --The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Sound and enlightening." --The Washington Post

"[A] richly-distilled cultural history of our woods...an even-handed and comprehensive history that could not be more relevant." --Bloomberg Businessweek

"Rutkow's unique, eye-opening history helps us see clearly both the forest and the trees." --Booklist, starred review