BREAKING NEW GROUND

This posthumously published autobiography of a public servant who pioneered in the field of forestry is more strictly the story of how conservation came to America than his own personal story except as he was a part of the movement. The years span from 1885 when Pinchot chose forestry as a vocation and a cause, after leaving Yale, to his defeat and the defeat of his policies under a weak Taft presidency. The first American to make this a profession, he covers, in the text, and in considerable detail, his first field trips, his consultant work for first private lands, then under T. R. Roosevelt, public lands; the creation of the Forest Commission and of vast reserves; the policies and practices applied to government lands; the development of the new science and its spread overseas. Enthusiastic though sometimes long-winded account of an active, crusading career, with perhaps more documentary than popular appeal.