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A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization
A contemporary view of the effects of wood, as used for building and fuel, and of deforestation on the development of civilization. Until the ascendancy of fossil fuels, wood has been the principal fuel and building material from the dawn of civilization. Its abundance or scarcity greatly shaped, as A Forest Journey ably relates, the culture, demographics, economy, internal and external politics, and technology of successive societies over the millennia.
The book's comprehensive coverage of the major role forests have played in human life--told with grace, fluency, imagination, and humor―gained it recognition as a Harvard Classic in Science and World History and as one of Harvard's "One-Hundred Great Books." Others receiving the honor include such luminaries as Stephen Jay Gould and E. O. Wilson. This new paperback edition will add a prologue and an epilogue to reflect the current situation in which forests have become imperative for humanity's survival. 50 black-and-white photos and illustrations, bibliography, index
The book's comprehensive coverage of the major role forests have played in human life--told with grace, fluency, imagination, and humor―gained it recognition as a Harvard Classic in Science and World History and as one of Harvard's "One-Hundred Great Books." Others receiving the honor include such luminaries as Stephen Jay Gould and E. O. Wilson. This new paperback edition will add a prologue and an epilogue to reflect the current situation in which forests have become imperative for humanity's survival. 50 black-and-white photos and illustrations, bibliography, index
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
September 17, 2011
John Perlin's "A Forest Journey" gets a bit tiring after a while. It seems a lot like he just strung together every source he could find regarding the riches that a civilization with lots of forest resources can accumulate, and subsequently the keen lack felt when deforestation destroys those resources, and finally the external impacts felt as deforestation causes floods, droughts, and soil erosion. Because of the paucity of early sources and the great abundance of later sources, the book is heavily weighted towards English and American wood-histories. This is perhaps unavoidable, but it heightens the impression that Perlin isn't picking his sources to make any particular point, but just because they're there.
Those negative impressions, however, fall away when you stand back and think about the implications of Perlin's many stories. The book most emphatically does not do this for the reader - Perlin never editorializes, never reads much past the contemporary evidence for any reason at all. And yet, through this intense bout of showing-not-telling, a profound and very scary ecological message is communicated.
The first take-home message is that wood is a much more important resource for civilization that most people realize. It is the flip side of the soil erosion coin, but its role as a full fledged partner of that dastardly coin was not clear to me before reading this book. It seems now that, in some cases, a civilization declines because it runs out of wood well before it runs out of fresh soil - depending on the soil type, the climate, and the relative demands for wood and agricultural products, of course. Wood is used as a building material for practically every implement people rely on for civilization - boats, carts, plows, weapons, tools, etc. Further, making things out of pottery, glass, or metal might even make the reliance on wood more acute: until very recently, all of these things required large quantities of wood to fuel smelters and kilns. Thus, civilized humans moved like locusts or a ferocious parasitic fungus through the forests of the Middle East and Europe (and, I'm sure, Asia and Africa, though the book didn't discuss them), leaved devastated soils and silted rivers in their wake, until some relief came in the form of coal. Coal and iron were both cheap in England around the time it had cut most of its trees, forcing them to steam ahead into the Iron Age. The bounty of trees in America seem to have been the spent capital that made America what it is today, for good and ill.
Thus, wood is brought into its rightful place as one of several non-renewably used resources that allowed humans to spend the forests' millennia of ecological capital to accumulate short-term wealth, which can subsequently be distributed in vastly unequal ways.
The second take-home message, which is given very slight explicit treatment throughout, is that the things humanity has hubristically destroyed were incredibly awesome. The forests of the Middle East, of Lebanon, the Mediterranean, of Western Europe, England, of New England and the Midwest, these were all irreplaceable biological treasures. The world is a substantially less incredible place without them (though, on the scale of Earth's Awesomeness, you might be forgiven for not noticing the difference).
The third, and even less emphasized take-home message, was that people lived in and depended on the forests that were being cut, throughout the whole book. If Mark N. Cohen's origin of agriculture theory (that seeds were scarcity food that people turned to because the world was exceeding pre-agricultural human carrying capacity) is on the right track, it is safe to assume there were people living in pretty much every easily accessible and habitable place on Earth by the time agriculture and deforestation happened. Indigenous peoples have lost their lives and their homes to the callused hands of loggers and farmers since the emergence of agriculture. This displacement is part of who we are. :( I wish Perlin had explored this more, though perhaps there just aren't sources on it in the ancient sections (which is interesting in and of itself).
Perlin's research, while somewhat tedious, makes the crucial step of tying modern deforestation to a pattern of destruction and displacement that has continued without interruption, without respite, since the beginning of agriculture. For this, it is extremely valuable. It is also nice that Perlin allows his evidence to make these conclusions for him, without feeling the need to editorialize throughout.
Those negative impressions, however, fall away when you stand back and think about the implications of Perlin's many stories. The book most emphatically does not do this for the reader - Perlin never editorializes, never reads much past the contemporary evidence for any reason at all. And yet, through this intense bout of showing-not-telling, a profound and very scary ecological message is communicated.
The first take-home message is that wood is a much more important resource for civilization that most people realize. It is the flip side of the soil erosion coin, but its role as a full fledged partner of that dastardly coin was not clear to me before reading this book. It seems now that, in some cases, a civilization declines because it runs out of wood well before it runs out of fresh soil - depending on the soil type, the climate, and the relative demands for wood and agricultural products, of course. Wood is used as a building material for practically every implement people rely on for civilization - boats, carts, plows, weapons, tools, etc. Further, making things out of pottery, glass, or metal might even make the reliance on wood more acute: until very recently, all of these things required large quantities of wood to fuel smelters and kilns. Thus, civilized humans moved like locusts or a ferocious parasitic fungus through the forests of the Middle East and Europe (and, I'm sure, Asia and Africa, though the book didn't discuss them), leaved devastated soils and silted rivers in their wake, until some relief came in the form of coal. Coal and iron were both cheap in England around the time it had cut most of its trees, forcing them to steam ahead into the Iron Age. The bounty of trees in America seem to have been the spent capital that made America what it is today, for good and ill.
Thus, wood is brought into its rightful place as one of several non-renewably used resources that allowed humans to spend the forests' millennia of ecological capital to accumulate short-term wealth, which can subsequently be distributed in vastly unequal ways.
The second take-home message, which is given very slight explicit treatment throughout, is that the things humanity has hubristically destroyed were incredibly awesome. The forests of the Middle East, of Lebanon, the Mediterranean, of Western Europe, England, of New England and the Midwest, these were all irreplaceable biological treasures. The world is a substantially less incredible place without them (though, on the scale of Earth's Awesomeness, you might be forgiven for not noticing the difference).
The third, and even less emphasized take-home message, was that people lived in and depended on the forests that were being cut, throughout the whole book. If Mark N. Cohen's origin of agriculture theory (that seeds were scarcity food that people turned to because the world was exceeding pre-agricultural human carrying capacity) is on the right track, it is safe to assume there were people living in pretty much every easily accessible and habitable place on Earth by the time agriculture and deforestation happened. Indigenous peoples have lost their lives and their homes to the callused hands of loggers and farmers since the emergence of agriculture. This displacement is part of who we are. :( I wish Perlin had explored this more, though perhaps there just aren't sources on it in the ancient sections (which is interesting in and of itself).
Perlin's research, while somewhat tedious, makes the crucial step of tying modern deforestation to a pattern of destruction and displacement that has continued without interruption, without respite, since the beginning of agriculture. For this, it is extremely valuable. It is also nice that Perlin allows his evidence to make these conclusions for him, without feeling the need to editorialize throughout.
March 23, 2015
Once upon a time, at the dawn of civilization, the planet’s forests were in peak condition, in terms of their age, range, and health. Wildlife was thriving. Modern lads and lasses would not believe their eyes if they could dream their way back to 10,000 BC and observe the stunning abundance of birds, fish, and wild grazing animals — and the absence of cities.
Sadly, on a dark and stormy night, some wise guys figured out how to smelt ore and forge ax heads, and things have been going downhill ever since. Axes did make it much easier to cut down trees, but the mad scientists totally failed to imagine the unintended consequences of their brilliant invention (as usual). But this was an era when it was quite popular to invent technologies that would have negative effects for many, many centuries. It was the trendy thing to do.
For example, the digging stick. Agriculture preceded metal making. First, they farmed shorelines and riverbanks until the soil fertility wore out. Then, they cleared forests, and wore out the soil there. Then they moved to a different forest, killed the trees, and wore out that soil. And on and on. This cycle has been repeated for thousands of years.
Prior to the digging stick, hunter-gatherers simply limited the number children they allowed to survive. By keeping their numbers low, they could live in a wild and healthy land, and enjoy a life that required far less effort and drudgery. Remember that!
John Perlin’s book, A Forest Journey, is a history of forest destruction, with stops including Mesopotamia, Crete, Greece, Cyprus, Rome, Venice, England, Brazil, and America. Humans have always used wood in a number of ways, but the era of agriculture has shown little mercy for forests, and it has turned more than a few of them into barren wastelands and urban wastelands.
A healthy forest grew in healthy fertile soil, but wheat would not grow in the shade, so the trees had to go. The wood was used to build houses, bridges, temples, and palaces. It was made into fences, docks, wagons, furniture, tools, and barrels. It heated homes and fueled industries that produced metal, glass, pottery, lime, sugar, and salt. Staggering quantities of wood were consumed by industry. Very importantly, wood was used to build cargo, fishing, and war ships. In earlier times, almost everything moved via water.
A civilization with access to abundant forests had great potential power. It could grow, create profitable industries, participate in trade networks, defend itself from conquest, and conquer new forests. Be careful not to confuse this glorious enterprise of never-ending growth with a free lunch. The path of never-ending growth always seems to end at a mountain of skulls. Typically, it allows for a few generations of excess and debauchery — and then the bill arrives. Holy expletive!
Perlin discussed the pattern repeated by the civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin. The trees were cut, then the heavy winter rains came, the soil eroded from the hillsides, the ports and bays were buried with eroded silt, and flash floods roared through the valleys. Eventually, the prime soil was sent to the bottom of the sea, and the remaining wasteland could produce little more than olives, grapes, and goats. The fuel for industry was gone, population plummeted, and the forest could never again recover on ruined land. Most of the arid wastelands of today’s Mediterranean Basin used to be forests.
Even the ancients understood that their civilizations were unsustainable. In the epic poem Cypria, Zeus started the Trojan War to thin the bloated human herd so the weary earth could recuperate. Plato wrote a bitter lament about the devastated land of Attica, a sickly skeleton of its former vitality. In Works and Days, Hesiod described the decline of humankind from the wonderful Golden Age to the horrid Iron Age. In Genesis, the Hebrew deity observed the stunning wickedness of humans, regretted creating them, and sent a huge flood to eliminate his multitudes of embarrassing mistakes.
Well hey, if they could see that what they were doing was really dumb, then why didn’t they just stop? They could have quit cutting trees, thrown away their icky plows, implemented a draconian population reduction regime, and lived happily ever after, right? Our modern consumer society has similar healthy options. Why don’t we just stop?
The bottom line was that people who preferred to limit their numbers, and continue living in harmony with nature, had no future. Their thriving unmolested forests looked like mountains of treasure in the eyes of civilized sailors cruising by — and civilized people cannot tolerate the sight of unmolested forests; it drives them nuts. In other words, if you didn’t destroy your forest, someone else would. If you didn’t build war ships, you were a helpless sitting duck. Thus, civilization bounced from region to region, repeating the same mistakes, turning countless paradises into parking lots. Progress!
That was the story in the Mediterranean Basin. It was a completely different story along the Pacific coast of America and Canada. In this region, the people remained hunter-gatherers, and their ecosystem stayed as healthy as it had been 10,000 years earlier (until you-know-who arrived). In the absence of agriculture and civilization, life can be far more pleasant for one and all, including the entire ecosystem. Remember that!
Perlin concluded with two huge chapters on industrial England and America, for which large quantities of written records still survive. He described greedy industrialists, corrupt politicians, exploited peasants, and several centuries of ridiculous environmental destruction.
By the end of the book, alert readers will recognize similar patterns of unwholesome behavior that continue to this very day. The rate of destruction has skyrocketed — and so has our understanding of the harm we are causing. Alert readers will be compelled to discard all fantasies of quick and easy remedies.
This book makes me crazy. Why isn’t ecological history a compulsory subject throughout every student’s education? Why are we still training our youth to be mindless consumers, and punctual obedient industrial robots? There is more important information in this book than I learned during most of my school years. Imagine what could happen if we ever produced a generation of well-educated children. Hug every tree you see.
Sadly, on a dark and stormy night, some wise guys figured out how to smelt ore and forge ax heads, and things have been going downhill ever since. Axes did make it much easier to cut down trees, but the mad scientists totally failed to imagine the unintended consequences of their brilliant invention (as usual). But this was an era when it was quite popular to invent technologies that would have negative effects for many, many centuries. It was the trendy thing to do.
For example, the digging stick. Agriculture preceded metal making. First, they farmed shorelines and riverbanks until the soil fertility wore out. Then, they cleared forests, and wore out the soil there. Then they moved to a different forest, killed the trees, and wore out that soil. And on and on. This cycle has been repeated for thousands of years.
Prior to the digging stick, hunter-gatherers simply limited the number children they allowed to survive. By keeping their numbers low, they could live in a wild and healthy land, and enjoy a life that required far less effort and drudgery. Remember that!
John Perlin’s book, A Forest Journey, is a history of forest destruction, with stops including Mesopotamia, Crete, Greece, Cyprus, Rome, Venice, England, Brazil, and America. Humans have always used wood in a number of ways, but the era of agriculture has shown little mercy for forests, and it has turned more than a few of them into barren wastelands and urban wastelands.
A healthy forest grew in healthy fertile soil, but wheat would not grow in the shade, so the trees had to go. The wood was used to build houses, bridges, temples, and palaces. It was made into fences, docks, wagons, furniture, tools, and barrels. It heated homes and fueled industries that produced metal, glass, pottery, lime, sugar, and salt. Staggering quantities of wood were consumed by industry. Very importantly, wood was used to build cargo, fishing, and war ships. In earlier times, almost everything moved via water.
A civilization with access to abundant forests had great potential power. It could grow, create profitable industries, participate in trade networks, defend itself from conquest, and conquer new forests. Be careful not to confuse this glorious enterprise of never-ending growth with a free lunch. The path of never-ending growth always seems to end at a mountain of skulls. Typically, it allows for a few generations of excess and debauchery — and then the bill arrives. Holy expletive!
Perlin discussed the pattern repeated by the civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin. The trees were cut, then the heavy winter rains came, the soil eroded from the hillsides, the ports and bays were buried with eroded silt, and flash floods roared through the valleys. Eventually, the prime soil was sent to the bottom of the sea, and the remaining wasteland could produce little more than olives, grapes, and goats. The fuel for industry was gone, population plummeted, and the forest could never again recover on ruined land. Most of the arid wastelands of today’s Mediterranean Basin used to be forests.
Even the ancients understood that their civilizations were unsustainable. In the epic poem Cypria, Zeus started the Trojan War to thin the bloated human herd so the weary earth could recuperate. Plato wrote a bitter lament about the devastated land of Attica, a sickly skeleton of its former vitality. In Works and Days, Hesiod described the decline of humankind from the wonderful Golden Age to the horrid Iron Age. In Genesis, the Hebrew deity observed the stunning wickedness of humans, regretted creating them, and sent a huge flood to eliminate his multitudes of embarrassing mistakes.
Well hey, if they could see that what they were doing was really dumb, then why didn’t they just stop? They could have quit cutting trees, thrown away their icky plows, implemented a draconian population reduction regime, and lived happily ever after, right? Our modern consumer society has similar healthy options. Why don’t we just stop?
The bottom line was that people who preferred to limit their numbers, and continue living in harmony with nature, had no future. Their thriving unmolested forests looked like mountains of treasure in the eyes of civilized sailors cruising by — and civilized people cannot tolerate the sight of unmolested forests; it drives them nuts. In other words, if you didn’t destroy your forest, someone else would. If you didn’t build war ships, you were a helpless sitting duck. Thus, civilization bounced from region to region, repeating the same mistakes, turning countless paradises into parking lots. Progress!
That was the story in the Mediterranean Basin. It was a completely different story along the Pacific coast of America and Canada. In this region, the people remained hunter-gatherers, and their ecosystem stayed as healthy as it had been 10,000 years earlier (until you-know-who arrived). In the absence of agriculture and civilization, life can be far more pleasant for one and all, including the entire ecosystem. Remember that!
Perlin concluded with two huge chapters on industrial England and America, for which large quantities of written records still survive. He described greedy industrialists, corrupt politicians, exploited peasants, and several centuries of ridiculous environmental destruction.
By the end of the book, alert readers will recognize similar patterns of unwholesome behavior that continue to this very day. The rate of destruction has skyrocketed — and so has our understanding of the harm we are causing. Alert readers will be compelled to discard all fantasies of quick and easy remedies.
This book makes me crazy. Why isn’t ecological history a compulsory subject throughout every student’s education? Why are we still training our youth to be mindless consumers, and punctual obedient industrial robots? There is more important information in this book than I learned during most of my school years. Imagine what could happen if we ever produced a generation of well-educated children. Hug every tree you see.
March 16, 2023
Very comprehensive in covering thousands of years of cutting down trees.
This book had a new edition released in February 2023 by Patagonia, which adds many photos and images in addition to text material. It’s hard for me to determine exactly all that is new, but certainly anything that is dated after the original release in 1989.
The book covers just about all of human civilization, going way back to when people started using trees for nearly everything. From building fires to keep warm, houses and buildings, tools, furniture and really just about everything. When we reach the iron age wood is needed for fuel to burn in the furnaces. In the later centuries wood was needed for ship building, particularly large trees for masts.
Wood has been part of human life and civilization growth since the beginning, and yet it has always been treated as an endless source that will never disappear. Perlin shows us that is otherwise, how landscapes have changed.
There is a bit of focus on the clearcutting that went on since the beginning of human civilizations with a focus on the west. Perlin does try to cover the globe but misses a few areas, several I wished he did cover (Easter Island for one). The bulk of the book discusses England then a larger section, nearly a third of the book, is about North America.
It seems humans have learned nothing about destroying forests, about what happened in the past, nor about how acting only for the immediate now will effect the future.
At times I found the information overwhelming in repetition of deforestation, and other times amazed at how many things wood is used for. I learned about countries and history and without forests, trees, wood, we would not able to sustain our way of life today. And yet we cannot regrow ancient forests, quickly. Some trees need to be left to grow, and certainly we can have some for use.
Did I mention the beautiful photographs? This is an incredible book.
Thank you to Patagonia and NetGalley for an advance review electronic copy of the book. However, I did listen to audiobook version for reading. I used the eBook for viewing the amazing images and photographs.
This book had a new edition released in February 2023 by Patagonia, which adds many photos and images in addition to text material. It’s hard for me to determine exactly all that is new, but certainly anything that is dated after the original release in 1989.
The book covers just about all of human civilization, going way back to when people started using trees for nearly everything. From building fires to keep warm, houses and buildings, tools, furniture and really just about everything. When we reach the iron age wood is needed for fuel to burn in the furnaces. In the later centuries wood was needed for ship building, particularly large trees for masts.
Wood has been part of human life and civilization growth since the beginning, and yet it has always been treated as an endless source that will never disappear. Perlin shows us that is otherwise, how landscapes have changed.
There is a bit of focus on the clearcutting that went on since the beginning of human civilizations with a focus on the west. Perlin does try to cover the globe but misses a few areas, several I wished he did cover (Easter Island for one). The bulk of the book discusses England then a larger section, nearly a third of the book, is about North America.
It seems humans have learned nothing about destroying forests, about what happened in the past, nor about how acting only for the immediate now will effect the future.
At times I found the information overwhelming in repetition of deforestation, and other times amazed at how many things wood is used for. I learned about countries and history and without forests, trees, wood, we would not able to sustain our way of life today. And yet we cannot regrow ancient forests, quickly. Some trees need to be left to grow, and certainly we can have some for use.
Did I mention the beautiful photographs? This is an incredible book.
Thank you to Patagonia and NetGalley for an advance review electronic copy of the book. However, I did listen to audiobook version for reading. I used the eBook for viewing the amazing images and photographs.
July 10, 2023
This book is just amazing and would make a great gift for history lovers, nature lovers, architects, fans of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, etc. The updated version has amazing photos and documentatation.
It gives a long view of human history and shows us that there's nothing new under the sun - humans have been raping and pillaging the land since the dawn of civilization. And the same dumb behaviors just keep repeating themselves because we think we don't have to learn from our mistakes - that if we just keep conquering, keep moving, keep innovating, and strategizing, that we'll stay ahead of the curve.
Another super-duper human quality that hasn't moved much is the sense of superiority over foreign cultures spiced up with a twisted sort of "appreciation" for native peoples - the noble savage trope isn't new, the Romans viewed the Germans like Europeans imagined the Native Americans. Pliny describes Germany as pristine..."untouched by the ages - and I love this quote from Cesar "There is no man in Germany we know, who can say that he has reached the edge of the forest...or who has learnt in what place it begins." As if the natives knew nothing about their territory because they didnt view it with the same lens or speak about it in the same terms as the conquerers.
Only negative point is that the historical information starts to get a bit repetitive, but I think that's the point, that the cycles keep repeating themselves over and over again. Some people might use the information therein to say that man has been taking resources from the earth for so long and we've always found a way out, thus we always will, but I think it's pretty obvious that the scale just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger...
Anyway, highly recommended!
Thanks to Patagonia and NetGalley for access to a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review! Just sad that I couldn't finish all of it before it archived :(
It gives a long view of human history and shows us that there's nothing new under the sun - humans have been raping and pillaging the land since the dawn of civilization. And the same dumb behaviors just keep repeating themselves because we think we don't have to learn from our mistakes - that if we just keep conquering, keep moving, keep innovating, and strategizing, that we'll stay ahead of the curve.
Another super-duper human quality that hasn't moved much is the sense of superiority over foreign cultures spiced up with a twisted sort of "appreciation" for native peoples - the noble savage trope isn't new, the Romans viewed the Germans like Europeans imagined the Native Americans. Pliny describes Germany as pristine..."untouched by the ages - and I love this quote from Cesar "There is no man in Germany we know, who can say that he has reached the edge of the forest...or who has learnt in what place it begins." As if the natives knew nothing about their territory because they didnt view it with the same lens or speak about it in the same terms as the conquerers.
Only negative point is that the historical information starts to get a bit repetitive, but I think that's the point, that the cycles keep repeating themselves over and over again. Some people might use the information therein to say that man has been taking resources from the earth for so long and we've always found a way out, thus we always will, but I think it's pretty obvious that the scale just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger...
Anyway, highly recommended!
Thanks to Patagonia and NetGalley for access to a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review! Just sad that I couldn't finish all of it before it archived :(
December 31, 2017
Perfectly clear, easy, interesting innocuous book, only it made my hair stand on end. YOU HAVE TO BURN SOMETHING-- to cook, to keep warm, to make steel, to make energy -- and people have since forever (See also J Diamond's _Collapse_). This book also contains maps of ancient harbors silting up and strangling the harbor towns because of deforestation-->erosion upstream.
Anyone who doubts that people have sometimes catastrophic effects on their environment should read this book. It is a good history of technology in the abstract.
Anyone who doubts that people have sometimes catastrophic effects on their environment should read this book. It is a good history of technology in the abstract.
November 1, 2018
Well-sourced book that gives a broad overview of the impact of human civilization of the forestation of the Earth across many different civilizations. Focus is on the west.
Reinforces the understanding that human society has always required fuel, and great densities of people have always put stress on their surroundings. It's remarkable to realize that the mediterranean coasts (among other now-denuded areas) were once a dense, impassable forest.
Ultimately, pretty repetitive and fairly high-level. Not the most engaging read, but excellent content.
Reinforces the understanding that human society has always required fuel, and great densities of people have always put stress on their surroundings. It's remarkable to realize that the mediterranean coasts (among other now-denuded areas) were once a dense, impassable forest.
Ultimately, pretty repetitive and fairly high-level. Not the most engaging read, but excellent content.
October 12, 2025
I read the Patigonia edition. This book provides a detailed, but not comprehensive, compillation of the eexploitation of forests to fuel human industry including the manufacture of ships, pottery, bronze, glass, iron, cement, railroads and of course ships. Perin provides many examples of the cycle of exploitation and the subsequent wealth followed by scarcity, environmental ruination and the loss of wealth. While the book gives exhaustive detail in some areas, for example the deforestation of England by steel mills, many important areas are left out. In particular, exploitation of South American and Africian forests and the exotic trees that have been driven to near extinction there are not covered. While I enjoyed the book for it's impirtant contribution to conservation and the history of forestry, I also found it long with unneeded detail that made it hard to get through. The book could have more impact if edited to about half the length.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2023
The forest is where I rejuvenate my soul and I have always loved trees and this book, part history, part anthropological story and part ecological warning, brought their importance to on human history and the life our planet into clear view. It was eye opening to consider we have 50% less trees than we did 10,000 years ago and also a reminder that if we take too much more our planet's ability to regenerate itself and store carbon will disappear. I loved the stories and the photos and while I did find myself skimming some parts when it drug on, I was able to finish it and I'd recommend the book.
August 16, 2023
I was quite excited to read this book when I heard about it.
.
But it became a drag.
.
First, there's the depressing history of worldwide deforestation, which hardly made Forest Journey pleasurable. But that's no surprise. It's why I wanted to read this particular piece of human history. Slogging through this made this a challenging read.
.
Second, (what really slowed me down) there are about 100-200 pages of political minutiae regarding English and American law when it came to the exploitation of the forests and the use of wood. That made the "Fate of Civilization" an Anglo-American story. Possibly this is a criticism of the book's subtitle.
.
Anyway, 4 🌟
.
But it became a drag.
.
First, there's the depressing history of worldwide deforestation, which hardly made Forest Journey pleasurable. But that's no surprise. It's why I wanted to read this particular piece of human history. Slogging through this made this a challenging read.
.
Second, (what really slowed me down) there are about 100-200 pages of political minutiae regarding English and American law when it came to the exploitation of the forests and the use of wood. That made the "Fate of Civilization" an Anglo-American story. Possibly this is a criticism of the book's subtitle.
.
Anyway, 4 🌟
April 21, 2025
I was having a bit of trouble jumping in between the endnotes online and the text in reality, but otherwise I adored the concept which I had never seen before (or I have seen it before but only in academic works, not for anything general). I showed my father a couple of the pictures in this book since they really are something to behold.
Sometimes I get mocked for it, but I am a soprano and no longer care. I sang "I am like a tree, and a tree is just like me..." (I think with Mrs Pandel's children's choir...?) when I was just learning the limits of my voice. That is what I thought of when I was reading this book.
Sometimes I get mocked for it, but I am a soprano and no longer care. I sang "I am like a tree, and a tree is just like me..." (I think with Mrs Pandel's children's choir...?) when I was just learning the limits of my voice. That is what I thought of when I was reading this book.
October 30, 2020
I was really disappointed with this book. 99 percent of the history mentioned I already knew. Showing the connection between the abundance of forest to the rise of civilization is a given. Humans are facing that with the depletion of fossil fuels and the climate change in progress. We just can’t seem to get it right. You can’t have civilization without the depletion of natural resources. Sadly Perlin offered no alternatives except perhaps a hint of wise forestry conversation. Are we too late?
February 16, 2024
Excellent book on the extreme dependence of humanity on trees, and how they have been squandering and mismanaging trees for thousands of years, leading to decline and collapse as they run out. And only fossil fuels averted disaster for UK. The worst is using wood for industrial production like ironworks or glassmaking, since it requires unsustainable large amounts of wood that needs to be turned into charcoal.
October 12, 2023
Over the ages, humans progressed by stripping forests. The wood was used for heating, cooking, melting metals, building ships, etc. We humans have a history of stripping and not replanting, meaning humans much look further for trees.
Although the book is sometimes a bit slow, the material is incredibly important. We need to take care of the Earth!
Although the book is sometimes a bit slow, the material is incredibly important. We need to take care of the Earth!
Read
May 7, 2024500 pages and humans STILL haven't learned that maybe deforesting land is a good way to bring your civilization to an end.
...to be fair, this seems to be a trend generally across all natural resources.
...to be fair, this seems to be a trend generally across all natural resources.
May 29, 2024
An interesting book.
Largely focusing on Western Europe and America, with shorter chapters on the Ancient Near East and empires like Greece and Rome, Perlin offers a concise, intellectual work that discusses the role of trees in both empire and civilization.
Largely focusing on Western Europe and America, with shorter chapters on the Ancient Near East and empires like Greece and Rome, Perlin offers a concise, intellectual work that discusses the role of trees in both empire and civilization.
March 12, 2019
This was an interesting read, albeit a depressing one. However, I would have called it the Story of Wood and Western Civilization, it really only discussed one part of the world.
August 3, 2021
Fascinating perspective on history and his conclusions are very compelling and plausible.
March 17, 2023
Updated version is absolutely gorgeous!
A must-read for naturalists! (Like me!)
A must-read for naturalists! (Like me!)
November 24, 2023
This book is long and dense, but I continued to enjoy it because it was a well written history of Civilization the last 5 thousand years that showed with complete proof the role of Trees in civilizations rise and fall over that time. A refresher for all the World History classes I took with a nuance not covered in those courses - the major role of trees in thousands of years of mankind's history! This should be a primer for any history course for no textbook I ever read covered the affect trees/forests have had on culture, economies,politics, technology, demographics, or the general fate of people over time. And it shows how much continued influence they have on our fate with Climate Change including all the surrounding issues like species demise, diseases like Covid 19, etc. A must read for any educated citizen of the World.
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January 27, 2014What a perplexing discovery I made with regards to this book. Such that I don't know what to think/do now. I heard of this book as it was made mention of in an online course through Princeton on Literature and the Environment. It served as background for a kind of environmental history of forests. Further, I read in an online review that it was deemed one of Harvard's top 100 books in 2004. These prestigious references aside, I decided that I would listen to a podcast interview from 2006 (near when a second edition of the text was released) with the author on an Environmental History forum.
Through the course of the interview I was alerted to all kinds of strange comments including that Perlin was not in an academic position when writing this book. Not that it matters, but when he started to reference one of his main source texts as a small press volume that he stumbled upon while on a bike trip at an International Book Fair, I set about finding this particular source text in his "Notes and Commentary." How decidedly annoying...this book has no bibliography, so I spent the next hours searching each note for reference to a nebulous source text. It was not there.
I felt pretty upset about the wasted time, so I started an Internet stalking for any and all information I could find about Perlin. I have found that he is an Analyst for the Department of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, but not on the faculty webpage. He is related in some way to a NASA project in California as well, again, but not mentioned anywhere on a mostly expired website. Undeterred I went to academic book reviews through my University library. What a mixed bag I found there, from downright outrage to guarded praise.
A top book for Harvard.
Referenced in a Princeton course.
But with the eerie feeling that Perlin may not have found respect as a scholar in the field.
To use or not to use?
Through the course of the interview I was alerted to all kinds of strange comments including that Perlin was not in an academic position when writing this book. Not that it matters, but when he started to reference one of his main source texts as a small press volume that he stumbled upon while on a bike trip at an International Book Fair, I set about finding this particular source text in his "Notes and Commentary." How decidedly annoying...this book has no bibliography, so I spent the next hours searching each note for reference to a nebulous source text. It was not there.
I felt pretty upset about the wasted time, so I started an Internet stalking for any and all information I could find about Perlin. I have found that he is an Analyst for the Department of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, but not on the faculty webpage. He is related in some way to a NASA project in California as well, again, but not mentioned anywhere on a mostly expired website. Undeterred I went to academic book reviews through my University library. What a mixed bag I found there, from downright outrage to guarded praise.
A top book for Harvard.
Referenced in a Princeton course.
But with the eerie feeling that Perlin may not have found respect as a scholar in the field.
To use or not to use?
September 5, 2013
This book tracks society's (and societies) reliance on wood for industrial development. Starting with slim, but early, references in Mesopotamia, societies developed, conquered and dispersed with the fortunes of the forest (and their mismanagement of the same). In the Mediterranean, forests or their decimation, were key in wealth and war, treaties and trade. Even in early Rome, people were able to observe the ecological impacts of deforestation and recognize the connection to soil erosion and soil fertility and siltation polluting former harbours, including diagrams, drawings and how-to books.
The 1st 1/3 of the book was most interesting to me as it added another facet on the ever-shifting pictures of migration and settlement, wars won and lost due to access to wood and the ability to build ships.
The 2nd 1/3 was focused mainly on Great Britain and the development of industry and the impact of deforestation on society and on shipbuilding again. This leads to the new world and the US, for the final 1/3 of the book, when one discovers that townships were created to get around the demands of the British crown to protect ship-worthy timber from the colonial decimation.
All in all, an interesting read, if you are inclined to see forests as essential to the environment and development of human civilization. I was impressed by the observations of people so long ago who paid attention to how nature responded and who had such a good grasp on the science of water and soil and trees. It is obvious to anyone willing to look beyond the end of their nose.
The 1st 1/3 of the book was most interesting to me as it added another facet on the ever-shifting pictures of migration and settlement, wars won and lost due to access to wood and the ability to build ships.
The 2nd 1/3 was focused mainly on Great Britain and the development of industry and the impact of deforestation on society and on shipbuilding again. This leads to the new world and the US, for the final 1/3 of the book, when one discovers that townships were created to get around the demands of the British crown to protect ship-worthy timber from the colonial decimation.
All in all, an interesting read, if you are inclined to see forests as essential to the environment and development of human civilization. I was impressed by the observations of people so long ago who paid attention to how nature responded and who had such a good grasp on the science of water and soil and trees. It is obvious to anyone willing to look beyond the end of their nose.
April 7, 2023
The book puts humankind's use (and misuse) of forests into historical perspective, illuminating patterns over thousands of years, and demonstrating again and again (and again and again and again) how we have soiled our own nest with a mixture of ignorance, greed, and outright stupidity. This doesn't make for particularly pleasant reading, but it is enormously informative and persuasive, and uncovers a lot of mostly hidden uses that trees are put to, as well as the ones that spring to most everyone's mind. I bought the Kindle version, and thus the many illustrations are less attractive than they would be in a real book--I just couldn't bring myself to buy a book about trees that was made with trees, and you can get a better look at the pictures on a tablet or PC if you want. I would say this is a must-read for anyone interested in forests, or human history.
November 8, 2011
A Forest Journey is an interesting expose of how the rise and fall of civilizations can be attributed to how they treat the environment upon which they depend. Perlin goes into great detail explaining examples of past civilizations relation to forests. This detail can become tedious at times. It doesn't take long to get a sense of the general trend. The numerous anecdotes become repetitive and not altogether interesting. My biggest qualm is that the entire book is focused on Europe and North America. No coverage is given to civilizations in Central and South America, Asia or Africa.
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September 22, 2008This is really interesting - especially if you are a big history buff. Going through all the Old World civilizations like Mesopotamia, The Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greece, etc... had been rough. But the take home message from each group is - when the forests are destroyed, the civilization collapses. Looking forward to getting to more "modern" times.
February 20, 2015
A wonderful look backward in time...
Informative, well-researched, and delightful for those
interested in the critical role of wood in past civilizations.
Informative, well-researched, and delightful for those
interested in the critical role of wood in past civilizations.
October 10, 2023
WOW fascinating… how intertwined we are with trees
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June 27, 2017hio[jhiopjmop
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