A Forest Journey

The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization

By: John Perlin

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

A Foundational Conservation Story Revived.

Ancient writers observed that forests always recede as civilizations develop and grow. The great Roman poet Ovid wrote that before civilization began, “even the pine tree stood on its own very hills” but when civilization took over, “the mountain oak, the pine were felled.”

This happened for a simple reason: trees have been the principal fuel and building material of every society over the millennia, from the time urban areas were settled until the middle of the nineteenth century. To this day trees still fulfill these roles for a good portion of the world’s population.

Without vast supplies of wood from forests, the great civilizations of Sumer, Assyria, Egypt, Crete, Greece, Rome, the Islamic World, Western Europe, and North America would have never emerged. Wood, in fact, is the unsung hero of the technological revolution that has brought us from a stone and bone culture to our present age.
Until the ascendancy of fossil fuels, wood was the principal fuel and building material from the dawn of civilization. Its abundance or scarcity greatly shaped, as A Forest Journey ably relates, the culture, demographics, economy, internal and external politics and technology of successive societies over the millennia.

The Forest Journey was originally published in 1989 and updated in 2005. The book's comprehensive coverage of the major role forests have played in human life—told with grace, fluency, imagination, and humor—gained it recognition as a Harvard Classic in Science and World History and as one of Harvard's "One Hundred Great Books." Others receiving the honor include such luminaries as Stephen Jay Gould and E.O. Wilson. This is a foundational conservation story that should not be lost in the archives. This new, updated and revised edition emphasizes the importance of forests in the fight against global warming and the urgency to protect what remains of the great trees and forests of the world.

©2023 John Perlin (P)2023 Random House Audio

This book should be read by everyone!

I read the first edition while living in a wilderness home in the mountains. No electricity and I pumped the water into a cistern but drank my water from the steam. I lived on earth time. This book and his other on solar were a gift. Thank you Patagonia for having the wisdom and insight to have Mr Perlin update and reissue this book. I borrowed the book from my library for its photos and illustrations but love listening.

Life changing

I never thought about history in relation to trees.
Well researched. Thank you, John Perlin.

Incredible connections

This should be the principle part of a course everyone should study, as part of an understanding of humans as part of a biosphere, as contrasted with being isolated lords of a realm in which the living world, with trees as elemental beings, are viewed only as commodities for exploitation. This story is both wondrous and tragic. We neglect its import at our peril.

Our Disappearing Woodlands

This book is a tragic history of the wastage of Earth's treasured forest lands.

Bill Dudley

Everybody interested in environmental history, read this book!

This book is excellent! It puts an unbelievable deeper understanding of greed and lack of sustainability built into civilization from the beginning of the modern age. I read thru hiking books, historical fiction, science, metaphysical and more. I don’t generally write reviews. This book is seriously impactful and if you like any of the above topics I hope you listen and it motivates everyone into more…. Understanding and love! I am even more grateful now for the old ( 100-200 yo Ponderosas) I get to hang out with! XO