That this book went on the TBR list is probably due to an aside by Vaclav Smil, on how wood is probably an underrated factor of production in the early industrial revolution, and that the cover of this book features a pod of sailing ships contributed to my sense that Ennos might be dealing with this question. I had not been aware of the man's previous writing career.

So, what we have here is basically one-quarter natural history, one-quarter anthropology, one-quarter history of technology, and one-quarter environmental science. Ennos begins by examining how people have exploited wood over time, slowly merging into a polite manifesto for more intelligence approaches to reforestation, and the cultivation of those forests. Ennos sees great opportunities for the recreation of vibrant forests on land that was never especially viable for food production and close in to cities. It's interesting to me that while he's concerned about clear-cutting lumbering and soil degradation, Ennos puts a lot more blame on uncontrolled animal grazing. He is also highly critical about trying to manage forests like one-crop plantations, populated with tree species that were thought to be commercially valuable, but which turned out to be environmental dead ends. About my best recommendation for this book is that Ennos did get me thinking about questions I didn't know I had. ( )

You know a book is really good when you can't wait to recommend it to people as soon as you finish. Roland Ennos tells the history of mankind as it relates to wood. He approaches his topic as a biologist, explaining the biological properties of wood that affected how people worked with it throughout history. This provides a new perspective on the history we know. The one warning I have is that some of the chapters require a good knowledge of woodworking in order to appreciate them fully. ( )

This book was held my interest for about half of it, but I just got bored with it and didn't feel like picking it up anymore. There was also an incredibly reductive and fatalistic argument made about the inevitability of colonization of North American indigenous peoples. The author argues that a lack of stone tools in early North American societies made them less able to exploit wood as a resource to improve the wheel to be used logistically, giving the colonizing forces an advantage over the colonized. This argument follows the myth that European colonization was a forgone conclusion when the reality was that European colonies received significant aid from local indigenous groups which helped the settlers survive in the early years. The complexity and legacy of colonialism shouldn't be reduced to such general pronouncements. ( )

Started this and ended it the next day unfinished, found it tedious and boring. I was expecting a book about wood as a building material, but this ain't it. It is extremely rare that I give up on a book of any kind, but this is one of those rare times. Maybe someday I will revisit it. ( )

Ennos makes a case for wood as the most important natural material in the story of human civilization, and there are some fascinating bits of information here, but the tedious prose and the long slow timeline (he starts with monkeys in trees) makes the reading feel like a test of endurance.