Description: A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have made--and resisted--Russia's many empires.
Brief description: Sophie Pinkham is a professor at Cornell University and a former NEH Public Scholar. Her writing on Russia and Ukraine has appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, and Harper's. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
Review Quotes: Perceptive, wide-ranging, and gracefully written, The Oak and the Larch is a momentous chronicle of Russia's vast and vital woodlands and their agency in a human history that touches us all. The lessons we follow from this sylvan past--and this book--will determine our future on Earth.--Jack E. Davis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf