Description: The American Chestnut tells the story of the American chestnut from Native American prehistory through the Civil War and the Great Depression. Davis documents the tree's impact on nineteenth-and early twentieth-century American life, including the decorative and culinary arts.
Brief description:
DONALD EDWARD DAVIS is an independent scholar, author, and former Fulbright fellow. He has authored or edited seven books, including Southern United States: An Environmental History. His second book, Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians, won the prestigious Philip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award. Davis was also the founding member of the Georgia Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, serving as its president from 2005 to 2006. He is currently employed by the Harvard Forest as a part-time research scholar and lives in Washington, D.C.
Review Quotes: Those of us who love the eastern forest have often wondered what it must have looked like to see the chestnuts in full bloom, their snowy canopy dominating the springtime woods. This fine history tells the fraught story of this species and the fraught story of the attempts to bring it back--stories which raise every question of ethics one can imagine. What a tale!--Bill McKibben "author of Wandering Home"