Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See: A New Vision of North America's Richest Forest

This is the best book I've read in years, and I'm an inveterate reader. Patricia A. Gowaty, a professor at UCLA, writes this of "Longleaf": "[It] is the finest natural history of this and the last century, setting a new standard for the genre." She is right.This is no mere "coffee table" book, though its photography is stunning. In it, extraordinary photography and equally lively prose merge seamlessly to pull even a lackadaisical reader into the story of the great Longleaf pine forest that once extended along the arc of the coastal plain at least from Virginia to the Big Woods of East Texas and the tree that populated them. My people had travelled the edges of that forest from Virginia and the Carolinas after the Revolutionary War and the opening of the Alabama and Mississippi Territories, and I had grown up among Longleaf pines in Central Louisiana. I'd heard passalong stories from my fatherr of its silence and the creatures and plants that inhabited that silence. His ancestors had started out in the Carolinas with cow penns and ended up in Louisiana as woodsmen and saw-mill people. But I had no idea it had thrice as much plant diversity than those of the Kansas Flint Hills meadows, for instance. And many of the plants that live only in Longleaf forests are far more ancient, suggesting they emerged in conjunction with this unique tree. Its writers say, "This isn't a forest. It isn't a meadow. It is one of the few ecosystems in the world, and perhaps the only one that can so fully claim to be both."I had read about the bogs in this forest that gave rise to free-range cattle- and hog-raising. Yet I'd never seen such a bog. Thanks to the photography in "Longleaf," I've seen one now, and so I better understand the history of the cow penns. I know why the red cockaded woodpecker lives only in Longleaf forests. I understand the uniqueness of the Longleaf pine ecosystem. And for that and more, I'm grateful. This is a spectacular book.Good nature writers write simply, using the great common vocabulary of a people, and Bill Finch, who is probably responsible for most of the writing in this book, is one of the best nature writers. The reader needs no specialized knowledge of botany or other sciences to understand this book. He needs only open its first pages.

I was surprised to see how Longleaf pine influenced the shaping of this country. This book expertly illustrates the history of Longleaf in the Southeast with interesting stories and anecdotes. The photographs are stunning as well!

A wonderful example of natural history written poetically. I recommend this book to readers with a wide range of interests, including foresters, historians, plants enthusiasts, bird enthusiasts, land owners, and lovers of literature. The photography alone is worth the purchase price, but don't waste this great read on a coffee table even though it would look great there.I have read many books on trees and plants in search of knowledge alone. The knowledge I gained from this read was quite enriching, almost as enriching as the experience I was swept into while reading the book. My search for knowledge was met beyond expectation, the experience was an added bonus.

Recall as a boy playing in the woods in and around Mobile, AL where Long Leaf Pines were far as the eye could see and many had tin cups catching the sticky Turbentine. I could always find a bog covered with flowers to pick and take home to my mother. The book is an excellent read with beautiful pictures.

We have established the Westernmost Longleaf Pine Sanctuary and promote the protection of all remaining old growth longleaf pines on the planet.This book is an excellent way to learn about these wonderful and abused trees.George H. RussellPresidentThe Ethician Foundation

The photography and the text are from all over the world of longleaf pine. If you don't have much interest in management or history, you can enjoy what must be the best travelogue of the longleaf world. The photos are splendid, worth the price of the book. Forests, even open, grassy ones (or grasslands with trees), are not easy to photograph, especially when they are burning.For many southerners, not to mention people from elsewhere, this book is a great introduction to what little is left of a once-vast world, now so shrunken as to be utterly unfamiliar. Only some sites are visitable, and many of those are under-appreciated. We don't see much tourism to see pitcher plants flowering in spring in the Florida panhandle and Alabama, one of the great botanical sights of North America. I wish people would come visit.I think the book has missed the southernmost longleaf, on the Lake Wales Ridge of central Florida. One tiny site, Polk County's Crooked Lake Sandhill park, is just big enough to hint at how the orange grove landscape once appeared. It's no bigger than the pine rockland parks in urban Miami, which have a different pine and are less grassy, but have similar fire cycles to longleaf.I commend this book to people who work with Ponderosa pine forests in the western states.I haven't finished reading the text, but it comes across as exceedingly well-informed. The authors have clearly talked to the right people as shown in the acknowledgements, and likely have read some of the right scientific and historic literature (there's no bibliography).I'm a botanist, retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Florida.

A poignant look at what our society needs to do to start repairing the environment. Although this book only considers Longleaf, its basic philosophy can be applied to other regions so that we can make our wilderness whole again.

Excellent history and the current restoration of the Longleaf Pine community in the Southeast. The photography is outstanding and goes a long way in providing the reader with a pictorial history of the Longleaf Pine and its importance to its dependent wildlife ecosystem as well as the human involvement.