From AwardAnnals
| Book: | The Dying of the Trees |
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| Author: | Charles E. Little |
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| Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) |
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Most of us remember the magic of a certain forest, or a favorite tree. Our children, says writer and conservationist Charles E. Little, probably won’t. The forests are declining. The trees are dying. Little shows how logging in the Northwest is far from the whole story, how virtually everywhere in this country our trees are mortally afflicted—even before they are cut. From the “sugarbush” of Vermont and the dogwoods of Maryland’s Catoctin mountains to the forests of the “hollows” in Applachia, the oaks and aspens of northern Michigan, and the mountainsides and deserts of the West, a whole range of human-caused maladies—from fatal ozone, ultraviolet rays, and acid rain to the disastrous aftermath of clear-cutting—has brought tree death and forest decline in its wake. In his journeys to America’s forests and woodlands, Little exhaustively explores this phenomenon with scientists, government officials, and citizen leaders and recounts how they have responded (and in many cases failed to respond) to this threat to global ecological balance.
