Books by the Forest History Society

The Society's Publication Program regularly produces scholarship in the fields of forest, conservation, and environmental history. Some of our offerings are described below.

To order any Forest History Society (FHS) title, please contact the publisher listed for each work or contact the Society at:	701 William Vickers Ave.   Durham, NC, 27701-3162   Tel.: (919) 682-9319   Fax: (919) 682-2349
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Tongass Timber: A History of Logging and Timber Utilization
in Southeast Alaska
by James Mackovjak

By the late 19th century, the forests of Southeast Alaska were being eyed for economic development and commercial interests had begun harvesting the high-quality Sitka spruce and other species in Alaska's panhandle. The arrival of high-intensity logging in the 20 th century and the establishment of wood pulp mills beginning in 1954, and lasting more than four decades, exposed the environmental and economic limitations of an integrated wood products industry in Alaska. Tongass Timber traces the history of the many attempts to develop the region's forests, revealing the forces that influence the present choices about forest management in Southeast Alaska.

This publication was supported by the Kendall Foundation, Mike Blackwell, the SB Foundation, the Alaska Historical Society, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and the Lynn W. Day Endowment for Forest History Publications.

© 2010 by the
Forest History Society.
386 pp.; 77 figures. Softcover.

$19.95 plus $4.00 shipping

America's Fires: A Historical Context for Policy and Practice
by Stephen J. Pyne

America does not have a fire problem. It has many fire problems. The policy of fire exclusion through most of the 20th century seemed successful at first but eventually lead to larger, more intense, and damaging fires. By the mid-1970s federal agencies pulled back from the fire suppression model and embraced a mix of fire practices, including forms of prescribed burning and let-burn policies.

The 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park carried fire issues to the public, advertising the ecological significance of free-burning fire and the dilemmas of trying to manage it. In America's Fires, Stephen Pyne, the world's leading fire historian, reviews the historical context of our fire issues and policies. The resulting analysis shows why it is imperative that the nation review its policies toward wildland fires and find ways to live with them more intelligently.

This revised edition was published with support from David L. Luke III, The National Forest Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, MeadWestvaco Corporation, and the Lynn W. Day Endowment for Forest History Publications.

© 2010 by the
Forest History Society.

94 pp.; 18 photos; 33 maps and figures.

$9.95 plus $4.00 shipping.

Forest Aesthetics
by Heinrich von Salisch; trans. by Walter L. Cook, Jr. and Doris Wehlau

Foresters will marvel at the similarities of problems and situations between Central European forestry of the late nineteenth century and late twentieth-century American forestry while reading Forest Aesthetics, a textbook written in 1902 by Heinrich von Salisch and translated by Walter L. Cook Jr. and Doris Wehlau (Durham: Forest History Society, 2008). Von Salisch, a forester and forest landowner in then-German Silesia who rebelled against his profession's addiction to economic forestry and its attendant clearcutting, argued that there was a middle ground and room for not only protecting the forest's attractiveness, but that through simple compromises, land managers could enhance the beauty of the forest without forgoing income. With its publication, von Salisch became the central promoter of aesthetics, trail maintenance, and forest health. Landscape management and design students and professionals will gain insight into the origins of forestry and landscape design, while others will find jewels of forest history in the author's philosophy and practical applications.

Forestry in Europe and the United States shares common roots in forest management and in the institutional, legal, and policy frameworks that form the basis for sustainable forest management. It was Europe, in the late nineteenth century, that introduced the basic principles of forestry to the United States. During the 20th century, the policy framework and social conditions for forestry on the two continents developed along distinctly different lines.

Now, European and American forestry institutions are focusing on many of the same concerns- sustainable wood production, biodiversity conservation, protection of water quality, climate change mitigation, and sustainable economic development in rural communities as a few examples. This reconvergence is resulting in new strategic alliances among forestry institutions on both continents.

A Hard Road to Travel: Land, Forests and People in the Upper Athabasca Region
by Peter J. Murphy with Robert W. Udell, Robert E. Stevenson, and Thomas W. Peterson

"Treating the Athabasca corridor for its entire non-Native history, A Hard Road to Travel takes its readers through two parallel histories brought together as one. It tells the stories of not just the fur traders on the transcontinental route between Hudson Bay and the Pacific Ocean, nor just the tourists, alpinists, skiers, and campers making annual pilgrimages to the mountains, but also the miners and foresters, the freighters and surveyors, the railway builders and homesteaders, the guides and wardens (horses in tow), forest industrialists and their provincial and federal government counterparts, and the forests and wildlife of the Athabasca."
--From the foreword by I.S. MacLaren.

Ground Work: Conservation in American Culture
by Char Miller

Ground Work offers intriguing insights into American conservation history. Miller demonstrates his remarkable ability as a historian to cast new light on familiar events and figures, such as Bernhard Fernow and Gifford Pinchot, and create a deeper and richer understanding of their significance, both in their times and in our own. Ground Work is a series of vignettes rather than a chronologically continuous tale. It spans topics from the Progressive Era roots of the American conservation movement, on which Miller has proven his virtuosity in earlier works such as Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, to new insights into the impact of documentary films on the environmental perceptions of 21st-century urban America. Advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental and forest history will find these essays stimulating, general nonfiction readers very enlightening.

The Duke Forest at 75: A Resource for All Seasons
by Ida Phillips Lynch

Beginning in the mid-1920s, Duke University purchased many small farms and interspersed forestland as a buffer and expansion land for the new campus. These tracts, totaling 4,696 acres, became the Duke Forest in 1931 when they were placed under the stewardship of Dr. Clarence Korstian, the first director of the Duke Forest and dean of the School of Forestry.

Through the following years, largely through the efforts of Dr. Korstian, some of the income derived from the sale of forest products was used to purchase additional land. Today the Duke Forest covers over 7,000 acres of land in six divisions.
Early objectives of the Duke Forest were designed to complement the School of Forestry's mission to advance graduate forestry education in the Southeast United States. The Duke Forest objectives were: to demonstrate practical and economical techniques for managing timber; to develop an experimental forest for research in the sciences associated with growing timber; and to provide an outdoor laboratory for students of forestry.

Over the years, academic uses of the Duke Forest have broadened beyond the original forestry objectives to encompass a variety of disciplines in the natural and environmental sciences. Now the Duke Forest is nationally recognized as a premier facility for outdoor education and environmental science research.

CD: Free with $5.00 shipping and handling
Contains the full proceedings from the Congress plus a bonus photo gallery, the full text of the 1905 Proceedings of the American Forest Congress, and the trailer from The Greatest Good: A Forest Service Centennial Film.

Order the DVD and Book Together and Save!

The Chiefs Remember: The Forest Service 1952-2001
(by Harold K. Steen)

Published by the Forest History Society, 2005. 156 pp. Ill., index.

ISBN softcover (0890300623): $8.95

Published by the Forest History Society, 2004.
vi + 64 pp. Ill., references.

Jack Ward Thomas: The Journals of
a Forest Service Chief
(edited by Harold K. Steen)

Forest Service chief during the early years of the Clinton administration, Thomas kept journals of his thoughts and daily experiences. The issues Thomas dealt with lie at the heart of recent Forest Service policy and controversy, starting with President Clinton's Timber Summit in Portland, Oregon, dealing with the spotted owl issue, and the 1994 loss of fourteen firefighters in the Storm King Mountain fire in Colorado.

Published by the Forest History Society, 2004. 417 pp. Ill., index

With a new preface by the author, this edition of the classic history (originally published in 1976) provides a broad perspective on the Service's administrative and policy controversies and successes. Steen updates the book with discussions of the spotted owl issue; wilderness and roadless areas; new research on habitat, biodiversity, and fire prevention; below-cost timber sales; and workplace diversity in a male-oriented field.

ISBN hardcover (9780295983738): $40.00
ISBN softcover (9780295984025) : $25.00

Published by the Forest History Society, 2004. xix + 145 pp.

The Conservation Diaries of Gifford Pinchot
(edited by Harold K. Steen)

Diary entries of conservationist and forester Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), describing his work as the first chief of the United States Forest Service, his relationship with President Teddy Roosevelt, his influence on forest policies and politics, and his interaction with prominent contemporaries such as botanist Charles Sargent, preservationist John Muir, and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Published by the Forest History Society, 2001. 230 pp. Ill., names index.

Smyth tells the story of his days as a forester for the Weyerhaeuser Company in the Coos Bay area of Oregon and presents what he calls a "biography" of industrial forestry in the Pacific Northwest.

ISBN softcover (0890300585) : $12.95

Published by the Forest History Society, 2000. xix + 145 pp.

ISBN hardcover (1880902125): $29.95
ISBN softcover (9781880902127): $19.95

Published by the Forest History Society, 1999.
187 pp. Ill.

Forest and Wildlife Science in America
(edited by Harold K. Steen)

This collection of scholarly essays traces the role of science in forestry and wildlife management for the last 100 years and is a must-have resource for land managers, researchers, and students.

Published by the Forest History Society, 1999. 455 pp. Ill., notes.

This reprint of Schenck's memoirs of his 15-year experience at North Carolina's Biltmore Estate provides colorful accounts of his efforts to introduce forestry to the estate, his relationships with Pinchot, Fernow, and Vanderbilt, and the struggle to bring forestry education to the United States.

ISBN softcover (9780890300558) : $10.95

Published by the Forest History Society, 1998. xiv + 224 pp.
Ill. notes, index.

Forest Service Research: Finding Answers to Conservation's Questions
(by Harold K. Steen)

Traces the early years of U.S. Forest Service research efforts, how the program strove for independence, the expansion of research efforts, and how the research has related to the environment.

Published by the Forest History Society, 1998. v + 102 pp. Ill., bibliography, index.

Excerpts of interviews with Clayton Posey, Robert Gilvary, John Welker, and Lawrence Thompson about their experiences on American billionaire Daniel K. Ludwig's tropical forest plantation along the Jari River near Monte Dourado in the Brazilian Amazon, from the 1960s through the 1980s. This was one of the largest plantation forestry efforts in the world.

ISBN softcover (9780890300541) : $12.95

Published by the Forest History Society, 1997.
ix + 281 pp.

View From the Top: Forest Service Research
(by R. Keith Arnold, Murlyn B. Dickerman, and Robert E. Buckman)

Oral history interviews with three former U.S. Forest Service deputy chiefs of research regarding fire prevention, forest experiment stations, forestry research, international forestry, the Society of American Foresters, the International Society of Tropical Foresters, and the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations.

Published by the Forest History Society, 1994. xiv + 365 pp.