America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery.

America's Ancient Forests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery by Thomas M. Bonnicksen, $75.

Author Thomas Bonnicksen blends science with voices from the past to tell a captivating story of America's ancient forests in an amazing panorama that sweeps across the continent and thousands of years. This rare book far exceeds the author's modest claim that it "ends where most books on forests begin."

With 600 pages of exquisite detail about diverse forest types carefully referenced to 1,100 sources, the book does not make an evening's reading. But most will find it worth every minute. Divided into two parts, roughly at the time of European discovery, this book challenges the conventional notion that the forests encountered by the first explorers were merely the product of time and natural succession.

Part One describes how changing climates and glaciers dramatically shaped the landscape and how Native Americans were a significant force in shaping the forests Europeans encountered. Their extensive use of fire to enhance wildlife habitat, facilitate hunting and travel, and improve natural food production is remarkable and seldom mentioned in books about American forestry. Part Two is a lively account of the first Europeans' encounters with the diverse forests of the continent, drawing on their narrative accounts of the enchanting woodlands they found.

A remarkable piece of scholarship, the book is a moving and sad story of the grandeur of these ancient forests, forever lost. It is reminder too of our debt to the native peoples who tended these forests so wisely for so long before we came.