Description
Book SynopsisShows how Northeastern urbanization - along with the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry - fostered a period of recovery for forests and created a new wildness of metropolitan nature.
Trade Review"This book is to be recommended to forestry professionals and practitioners, as well as providing a valuable reference to both educators and students in natural resource management and policy."
-- Benktesh D. Sharma * Human Ecology *
"Nature Next Door, while providing the ecological and cultural narrative that fills the gap between William Cronon's Changes in the Land and Tom Wessels's Reading the Forested Landscape, is as much about the future—the next hundred years—as it is about the past."
-- Naomi Heindel * Orion *
"Stroud's story has global implications far beyond the Northeast."
-- J. Brooks Flippen * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"Ellen Stroud offers a compelling historical explanation for the return of America’s northeastern forests. Historians, land managers, and elected officials would do well to consider the historical and continuing relationship between forests, towns, and cities in America’s Northeast. Stroud’s excellent book offers an instructive path into the woods."
-- Aaron Shapiro * Environmental History *
"The extent of reforestation in the American Northeast is nothing short of remarkable, especially considering that it is the most urbanized region of the nation. Once 75 percent deforested, the region is now 75 percent forested. In this elegant volume, Ellen Stroud asks how that happened and finds unexpected answers."
-- Albert G. Way * Journal of American History *
"Stroud helps us understand the process of change at many different scales."
-- Harold Henderson * Planning *
"Ellen Stroud…explores the Northeast’s interconnected urban and rural spaces and invites readers to reconsider old assumptions about their separateness. Nature Next Door is essential reading for scholars and citizens interested in the relationship between urban and rural history."
-- Anthony Penna * The New England Quarterly *
"Stroud writes with a clear and elegant voice. The stories of individuals that she weaves throughout her book, particularly those of numerous women, provide a warm human dimension to her landscape analysis."
-- Janet Ore * Technology and Culture *
"With this intriguing book, environmental historian Stroud has fundamentally rewritten the recent forest history of the northeastern US. . . . Valuable for anyone interested in forestry, urban forestry, and land use or conservation. Highly recommended."
* Choice *
"The book almost reads as a historical travelogue through the Northeastern forested landscape with occasional pauses to explore the political ecology that shaped present day forests."
-- Benktesh D. Sharma * Human Ecology *
"With this intriguing book, environmental historian Stroud has fundamentally rewritten the recent forest history of the northeastern U.S."
* Choice *
Table of ContentsForeword | The Once and Future Forest / William Cronon
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Maps
Introduction | The City and the Trees
1. Water and Woods in Pennsylvania
2. New Hampshire Watersheds, Viewsheds, and Timber
3. Packaging the Forested Farm in Vermont
4. Who Owns Maine’s Trees?
5. Fractured Forests and the Future of Northeastern Trees
Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Index
