Urban Forests
A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape

Fascinating information but poorly organized - jumped around from topic to topic with no coherent timeline or subject categorization. In many places, would have appreciated additional information about WHY something was happening, rather than a mere reporting it did happen. Four stars for informatio......more

I found this book (while jumpy and sometimes slow moving) just the inspiration I needed. Reading about the rabble-rousy, seat-of-the-pants rise of Tree People in LA and how Boy Scouts were leveraged to bring back the American Elm made my heart swell and reflect on how I can make a difference in my o......more

Here's a book that accomplished a few things for me that I hadn't been doing: learning about chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease and the infestations of borers that are killing trees across America. It was also cool to learn about the huge efforts that have gone in to making American urban forests he......more

For tree lovers, this book reads like part thriller: horror and dread as the author details the loss of millions of American trees over the past century, most notably the American chestnut, elm and ash as foreign invaders decimated our tree canopy. But then we have a call to action as the book enabl......more

A nonfiction book that describes itself as "a passionate, wide-ranging, and fascinating natural history of the tree in American cities over the course of the past two centuries". I'm about to take issue with that blurb, but first I want to say that I did enjoy reading it. My main complaint about this......more