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Book Review

‘American Canopy’ by Eric Rutkow

From railroads and rifles to Paul Bunyon and Daniel Boone, how abundant forests fueled the growth and identity of a nation

By Anthony Doerr

 | 

    May 20, 2012

The young, massively-altered forests we have left in the U.S. are ghosts of the original American treescapes, unimaginable swaths of ancient trees that mantled the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Where did the old forests go? Sailing masts for the British navy. Staves for wine barrels. They went into railroad cars; they went up the hugely inefficient chimneys of settlers, says the historian Eric Rutkow puts it in his big, engrossing, and sedate first book, “American Canopy: Trees, Forests and the Making of a Nation”.

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