A Natural History of North American Trees
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Narrated by:
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Kevin Stillwell
About this listen
Donald Culross Peattie's two books about American trees were first published in the 1950s. In this edition, modern listeners are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we listen to Peattie's descriptions, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly. Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country's history.
Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships.
It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods - for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot listen to this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we listen to his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed. A Natural History of North American Trees gives us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest.
©2007 Houghton Mifflin Company. Foreword copyright 2007 by Mark R. Peattie. Introduction copyright 2007 by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Copyright 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1964 by Donald Culross Peattie. Copyright renewed 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, and 1981 by Noel Peattie. Copyright 1950 and 1953 by Paul H. Landacre. Copyright renewed 1977 by Joseph M. Landacre. Compilation and revisions copyright 2007 by the estate of Donald Culross Peattie. (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The Man Who Made Things out of Trees
- By: Robert Penn
- Narrated by: Robert Penn
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Out of all the trees in the world, the ash is the most closely bound up with who we are. From tool handles to arrows, wheels and bowls to furniture and baseball bats, humans have made more and varied use of ash than any other kind of wood. Journeying across the English-speaking world, Robert Penn meets craftsmen with rare skills and a knowledge of the properties of ash developed over millennia.
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Amazing tale and daunting warning
- By Amazon Customer on 06-11-19
By: Robert Penn
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The Maine Woods
- By: Henry David Thoreau
- Narrated by: Duncan Brownlehe
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.
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Listened to this at least 3 times
- By Teagan MacEachern on 01-30-23
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The Tree
- A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter
- By: Colin Tudge
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
- By E. Miller on 04-28-17
By: Colin Tudge
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A Naturalist at Large
- The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich
- By: Bernd Heinrich
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the finest scientists and writers of our time comes an engaging record of a life spent in close observation of the natural world, one that has yielded marvelous, mind-altering insight and discoveries. In essays that span several decades, Bernd Heinrich finds himself at his beloved camp in Maine, plays host to annoying visitors from Europe (the cluster fly) and more helpful guests from Asia (ladybugs), and unravels the far-reaching ecological consequences of elephants in Botswana bruising mopane trees.
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Listen and See the World Anew!
- By Thoughtful Learner on 06-03-18
By: Bernd Heinrich
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Cræft
- An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts
- By: Alexander Langlands
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In Craeft, archaeologist and medieval historian Alexander Langlands argues that our modern understanding of craft only skims the surface. His journeys from his home in Wales have taken him along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe, from Spain through France and England to Scotland and Iceland in search of the lost meaning of craft.
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Too little information too much brag and biography
- By Thomas B. on 04-28-21
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The Old Ways
- A Journey on Foot
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive voice, The Old Ways folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology, and literature.
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A perfect pairing of prose and narrator
- By chris on 11-05-12
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Trees in Paradise
- A California History
- By: Jared Farmer
- Narrated by: Kevin Scollin
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities.
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lovely audiobook
- By Michael M. on 08-02-22
By: Jared Farmer
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
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Through the Brazilian Wilderness
- By: Theodore Roosevelt
- Narrated by: Andre Stojka
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A former American president nearly dies during an ill-planned exploration through the Brazilian Wilderness and down the River of Doubt. Theodore Roosevelt was a naturalist, explorer, author, hunter, governor, soldier and 26th President of the United States.
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narration hindrance to story
- By EBH on 09-29-20
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On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- By: Henry David Thoreau
- Narrated by: Jim Killavey
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This essay by Thoreau first published in 1849, argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences. It goes on to say that individuals have a duty to avoid allowing the government to make them the agents of injustice. The quote: "That government is best which governs least," sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, actually was first found in this essay. Thoreaus' thoughts were motivated by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War but they are still relevant and resonate today.
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10:22 p.m., 10th of January, 2018
- By Anonymous User on 01-11-18
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The Journals of Lewis and Clark
- By: Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Nicholas Biddle - ed.
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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When President Thomas Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Purchase - the vast, unknown lands between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico - he promptly established an expedition to map America's new frontier. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark outfitted the "Corps of Discovery," and on May 14, 1804, 45 men in 3 boats set off up the Mississippi.
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Inspiring!
- By John on 09-17-11
By: Meriwether Lewis, and others
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Great book, but narration doesn’t fit.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
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By: Colin Tudge
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How to Read a Tree
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Tristan Gooley helps listeners reconnect with nature by finding direction and searching for hidden clues in stars, clouds, water and more. Now, he turns his attention to perhaps nature’s most beloved feature – the stately, majestic tree. Every single tree tells us an epic story – if we know how to read it! Here you’ll discover hundreds of astonishing secrets hiding in plain sight among the living network of branches, trunks, roots, bark, leaves, buds, flowers, stumps and more.
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For nature lovers
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In The Heartbeat of Trees, renowned forester Peter Wohlleben draws on new scientific discoveries to show how humans are deeply connected to the natural world. In an era of climate change, many of us fear we’ve lost our connection to nature - but Peter Wohlleben is convinced that age-old ties linking humans to the forest remain alive and intact. We just have to know where to look.
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More the Heartbeat of the author
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Oaks sustain a complex and fascinating web of wildlife. The Nature of Oaks reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. From woodpeckers who collect and store hundreds of acorns for sustenance to the beauty of jewel caterpillars, Tallamy illuminates and celebrates the wonders that occur right in our own backyards. The Nature of Oaks will inspire you to treasure these trees and to act to nurture and protect them.
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Inspirational
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During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—a brownfield site bisected with an abandoned petroleum pipeline and littered with concrete debris and landfill trash—was an unlikely site for a home. Along with his son, Brown had explored similar empty lots around Austin, so-called “ruined” spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment as Austin became a 21st century boom town.
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Beautiful and encouraging
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Great book, but narration doesn’t fit.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
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For nature lovers
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- Narrated by: Mike Grady
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In The Heartbeat of Trees, renowned forester Peter Wohlleben draws on new scientific discoveries to show how humans are deeply connected to the natural world. In an era of climate change, many of us fear we’ve lost our connection to nature - but Peter Wohlleben is convinced that age-old ties linking humans to the forest remain alive and intact. We just have to know where to look.
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More the Heartbeat of the author
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Beautiful and encouraging
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In his beloved book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben revealed astonishing discoveries about the social networks of trees and how they communicate. Now, in The Power of Trees, he turns to their future, with a searing critique of forestry management, tree planting, and the exploitation of old growth forests. At the heart of The Power of Trees lies Wohlleben’s passionate plea: that our survival is dependent on trusting ancient forests, and allowing them to thrive.
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Critical Urgency
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Forest Walking
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When you walk in the woods, do you use all five senses to explore your surroundings? For most of us, the answer is no—but when we do, a walk in the woods can go from pleasant to immersive and restorative. Forest Walking teaches you how to engage with the forest by decoding nature’s signs and awakening to the ancient past and thrilling present of the ecosystem around you.
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More than meets the eye
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In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.
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Okayyy
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In this wholly original audiobook, biologist David Haskell uses a one-square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window into the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life. Each of this audiobook's short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers.
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Delightful stories
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That Wild Country
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Since its inception, however, America’s public land system has been embroiled in controversy - caught in the push and pull between the desire to develop the valuable resources the land holds or conserve them. Alarmed by rising tensions over the use of these lands, hunter, angler, and outdoor enthusiast Mark Kenyon set out to explore the spaces involved in this heated debate, and learn firsthand how they came to be and what their future might hold.
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A Must Read!
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In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself. Color is full of extraordinary people, events, and anecdotes—painted all the more dazzling by Finlay’s engaging style. The colors that craft our world have never looked so bright.
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The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the power of present day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, even afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at. Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself.
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In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of "Beaver Believers" recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them.
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A fine natural history and great listen
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The Light Eaters
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The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
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Entertaining perhaps but not science.
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By: Zoë Schlanger
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The Triumph of Seeds
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We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
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Delightfully simplistic!
- By Adrian on 03-30-16
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The Weather Detective
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In this first-ever English translation of The Weather Detective, Peter Wohlleben uses his long experience and deep love of nature to help decipher the weather and our local environments in a completely new and compelling way. Analyzing the explanations for everyday questions and mysteries surrounding weather and natural phenomena, he delves into a new and intriguing world of scientific investigation.
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Don't bother unless you live in the UK
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What listeners say about A Natural History of North American Trees
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jonathan
- 03-01-24
Makes me want to walk every forest
Describes the magnificence of trees and habitats so that I pine to see every one of them.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Carter
- 08-03-24
Poetic
A love poem to trees. Beautifully written and a lovely glimpse into America's past.
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- K. R.
- 03-24-22
Excellent book for tree lovers
I found this book to be absolutely fascinating, because of the interesting tidbits shared on each of the trees and the obvious affection that the author holds for some tree species. I enjoyed learning about the uses of the trees including uses by Native Americans. I also enjoyed learning about the wood products that come from each of the tree species. Yes the information is old, however, it was still educational to hear what the environmental issues were 70 years ago.
The narrator, however, I struggled with. He mispronounced so many words including Latin names and location names, that it was very distracting for me. I feel that if you’re going to be a narrator, then you need to do your homework and learn how to pronounce words correctly.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Euler2.71828
- 08-29-15
A good review of NA silva
As an amateur botanist and ecologist, I highly recommend this book. It is worth the credit and time. It is a bit dated, but it provides useful ethnobotanical information on more than 200 tree species.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Peter
- 03-21-23
A beautiful Narrative
To be honest, I was not sure what to expect, but I found this extremely interesting and reflective. My appreciation for trees in North America and their history is something I will always remember. I loved this book so much, that I got it in print to go back and reference pages.
Honestly, one of my top 3 tree focused books!! Absolutely stunning!!
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2 people found this helpful
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- LEE
- 03-22-18
What they don't teach in school
I had no idea, and am betting it's the same for most people. We've had some amazing trees in North America. The destruction of many types was far worse than I anticipated.
The stories of these trees enchant. This is unlike any other book on the subject, and it was written so many years ago.
Narration was perfect for this book, I think.
The way I listened was to jump around the chapters because nothing is lost doing so.
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- James A. Miehls
- 04-10-22
everything I wanted it to be
loved it. well narrated (calming but not uninteresting). probably not for those not already "into" trees. but who knows. I learned a fair number of american frontier times factoids as well.
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- Texas
- 02-08-17
Great writer, great reader.
what an interesting book. Such poetry about trees. You just can't go wrong with Kevin Stillwell.
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- Jake Smulkowski
- 03-20-24
Fantastic, archaic, spellbinding
I loved the text. The performance was great, although I found the consistent mispronunciations rather distracting. Words like slough, and many place names were often pronounced in confounding and inconsistent ways.
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- Gary
- 10-29-21
Extremely Abridgment!
If you love trees JUST BUY a physical copy of both volumes.
This is a very confusing production. Is it worth it to get this information out to anyone and everyone who shows even the slightest interest? Yes absolutely but either fire this editor or retitle this audiobook for what it is “Donald Culross Peattie On Trees: Select essays from his two volume master work ‘the American Sylvia’”
Good for kids, long roads, people who are on the fence maybe but if you make it past chapter 4 in this audiobook you will be greatly enriched by the full print material, complete with Peattie’s full list of species, plant descriptions, and original images that make identification possible. Best money I’ve spent on a physical book in ages.
If you’re still reading this just know that the hubris of this editor’s comments in this audio edition are unforgivable. Surely he has a job and duty to preform but to use such clouded language as to the justification of cutting down whole swaths of trees from Peattie’s Sylvia is as near sighted as those who didn’t cherish this great content’s trees.
It is my sincere hope that some brave souls will undertake the truly colossal task of recording both original volumes for the future of all tree loving audio book listeners.
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