A landmark text
This is one of the classics of American environmental history, sitting on the high shelf with Stilgoe's "Common Landscapes of America", Pyne's "Fire in America", Cronon's "Changes in the Land" and "Nature's Metropolis", and Reisner's "Cadillac Desert".
Williams does a masterful job of pulling together social and economic sources (including much primary material) to present a wholly original view of American history. For thousands of years people have shaped the forests of North America, and in subtle ways the forests have shaped us. However, forest history has long been hidden behind the curtain of political events that constitute the official record of "history", aided by the amazing shortness of human memory. Williams brings forest history (and environmental history in general) back into the light with a lucid account of forest history at the scale of the whole nation.
He dusts off long-forgotten sets of nineteenth and twentieth century statistics, and summarizes them in easily comprehended graphs and maps to make the point that the forest resource played an important role in population expansion across North America, in the evolution of our governmental structure, and in development of modern technologies. To the forest ecologist, he says 'Much of the forest you are looking at today is simply an artifact of human intervention in the past'.
Like all works which attempt to convey a long view of history, A&TF becomes a bit vague as it approaches modern day. The owls vs. jobs controversy of the Pacific Northwest is not mentioned, nor are the regrowth of eastern forests and exurban sprawl given the space they deserve. Nevertheless, the accounts of events in the 17th - mid-20th century are excellent, and highly relevant considering we are still dealing with their aftermath.
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