In the Rainforest: Report from a Strange, Beautiful, Imperiled World

by Catherine Caufield

In the Rainforest takes us to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, revealing a colorful and bizarre world where fish live on fruit, spiders prey on birds, and violets grow to the size of apple trees.

"I recommend In the Rainforest as scientific journalism at its best, and [Caufield's] book as the one to read to become informed about the tropical crisis. Caufield traveled the world, went to the difficult places, sometimes beautiful and often dispiriting, mastered the important ideas, and talked to an impressive number of people on all sides of the issues. . . . There are villains in corrupt government agents who aid in the destruction of native tribes, greedy caballero landowners, and even the governmental planners who with the best of intentions rush heedlessly toward the environmental degradation of their own countries."—E. O. Wilson, Science

"The whole book is filled with amazing facts. . . . Moving and informative."—Ellen W. Chu, New York Times Book Review

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Environment, Science, Biology, Natural History

310 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 1984

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written and frequently fascinating overview of tropical rainforests in the Americas, Africa and Asia. A good companion to Tropical Nature, which focuses exclusively on the science, Caufield's book delves into the economics, politics and history of rainforests. Various chapters touch on the ability of traditional forest dwellers to live and farm in the forest and their shameful treatment by colonizers, stories of Costa Rica's Quaker dairy farmers and New Guinea's gold miners, the history of quinine (an anti-malarial drug derived from the bark of the cinchona tree), and above all the tragic, far-reaching and unexpected consequences of deforestation. Caulfield competently integrates a tremendous amount of information, and when she dips into her personal experiences, she can be a funny, tart observer. The only knock on the book is that it is several decades in need of an update.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thorough appreciation of the difficulties of a true understanding of tropical rainforests around the world and the interplay of science, conservation, and climate change that was evident at least 20 years ago. All are exacerbated by people willing to exploit this amazing resource for profit or even just to survive.
The scope of the book is huge and was a serious undertaking on behalf of the author.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had one of the best overviews of rain forest ecology I have come across that is not from a technical text. The author really summed up all the intricacies of wildlife and plant-animal interactions very well in the first few opening chapters. After that she went increasingly into human aspects, from the indigenous hunter gatherer tribes and their lifestyles to the encroachment of industrial civilization and ensuing destruction. From logging to transmigration, cattle ranching, medicines and gold mining, the coverage was indeed very broad both topically and geographically as Caufield traveled extensively in the writing of the book. However, while the facts about ecology are largely unchanged today, what was once current affairs style reportage on deforestation and land use change is now quite outdated almost 40 years since this book was written. Sadly, the scale and extent of damage has only increased exponentially since despite books such as these sounding the alarm.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very informative book. I appreciated the rain forest more after this book. Alot of statistics to follow though. But a good reference book.

[Brittney Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel bad rating this 3 stars as it was packed full of fascinating information and statistics and was incredibly well written—however, I was expecting more creative nonfiction, interesting and beautiful animals and plants in the rainforest, and although I felt that focusing on the deforestation of the rainforest was important, it was about 75% or more of what was discussed, and I did expect less about this. A great reference on the harmful uses of the rainforest, but not the most gripping book.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting overview on all things rainforest and rainforest politics from one of RAN's board members (although written before RAN existed.) sad how little the situation has changed.