Book Review: The Age of Wood, A Most Fascinating Read

I am referring to The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization (2020), by Roland Ennos. The book is part of a trilogy, which includes Trees and Plant Life which I have not read.

To give you an idea of the length and depth of the book, here are some chapter titles:

• Our Arboreal Inheritance
• Supporting Our Pretentions
• Losing Our Hair
• Replacing Firewood and Charcoal
• Tooling Up
• Melting and Smelting
• Supplying Life’s Luxuries
• Wood in the 19^th Century and Modern World
• Mending Our Strained Relationships

The book explains how, from ships to furniture and much more, the use of wood changed civilization, covering urban forestry, reducing CO₂ impact, the calming effects of both wood and woods, and some remedial solutions for some of our “wooden” mistakes. You just have to read this book.

I close with a special message from The Lorax by Dr. Suess:

“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

By Paul Shogren, Penn State Forestry, Class of 1951