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    Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape
    Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape
    Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape
    Audiobook13 hours

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

    Written by Jill Jonnes

    Narrated by Coleen Marlo

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    As nature's largest and longest-lived creations, trees play an extraordinarily important role in our cities; they are living landmarks that define space, cool the air, soothe our psyches, and connect us to nature and our past. Today, four-fifths of Americans live in or near urban areas, surrounded by millions of trees of hundreds of different species. Despite their ubiquity and familiarity, most of us take trees for granted and know little of their fascinating natural history or remarkable civic virtues.

    Jill Jonnes's Urban Forests tells the captivating stories of the founding mothers and fathers of urban forestry, in addition to those arboreal advocates presently using the latest technologies to illuminate the value of trees to public health and to our urban infrastructure. The book examines such questions as the character of American urban forests and the effect that tree-rich landscaping might have on commerce, crime, and human well-being. For amateur botanists, urbanists, environmentalists, and policymakers, Urban Forests will be a revelation of one of the greatest, most productive, and most beautiful of our natural resources.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 2, 2019
    ISBN9781977346346
    Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape

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    Reviews for Urban Forests

    3.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I will say up front that I had a certain assumption about what this book would be about and it's not really the book's fault that it did not live up to that expectation. Urban Forests is a history of trees popular in American cities, mostly told through the stories of the men and women who introduced and popularized them. There are also interesting sections on Dutch Elm Disease and American Chestnut plagues as well as other major events and places in American forestry. The book is made up of shorter chapters focused mostly around these biographical sketches or particular periods of time. I would say this is definitely more a book of history than biology, forestry, or urban design, although there are interesting facts from all those areas. It is probably appealing to some audiences that the story is told about the people rather than the trees themselves, but I really am not interested in biographies. This is an easily-read book requiring very little background knowledge in plants, although knowing what a stamen is would help. There is a predictable amount of colonialism and racism, given the time period, as white Americans traveled to e.g. China and "discovered" trees which they became famous for. The author presents those events credulously without any kind of criticism. I will praise her efforts to try to include as many female tree-lovers as possible, but it is still fairly sparse, as the most prominent characters in this book are the rich white men you'd expect. This book also does not go back any further than the 1800s or provide any insight into African slaves' presumable influence on the care and planting of trees.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Overall this is the story of wave after wave of mass tree deaths, along with threads about the scattered and underfunded research into remediations and treatments.The main tree deaths are:Chapter 4. A Plague Strikes the American ChestnutChapter 9. Battling to Save [the American Elm]Chapter 16. Asian Long-Horned BeetlesChapter 18. Waging War on the Emerald Ash BorerFundamentally one theme is that ecological disasters can happen and our society, our government and our research systems are not good at dealing with them.The arc of the story around the Chestnut, Elm, Ash and the Asian Long-Horned Beetles is such a tale of neglect, underallocated resources, misallocated resources, and disaster that it makes for pretty depressing reading, particularly since there is no grand resolution at the end.