THE AGE OF WOOD

Informative study of the crucial role of wood in the development of humans over centuries.

“I hope [this book] will show that for the vast majority of our time on this planet we have lived in an age dominated by this most versatile material, and that in many ways we still do,” writes Ennos, a professor of biological sciences who has authored textbooks on trees, statistics, and biomechanics. In this enthusiastic exploration, which begins in prehistory and moves to the present, the author digs deeply into paleoanthropology, tracking the earliest technological developments of man and what essentially brought them out of the forest—namely, climate change and the necessity of making fire. Ennos delves into a wide variety of disciplines, including social history, carpentry, geography, geology (specifically, how new energy sources such as peat and coal surpassed wood during the Industrial Revolution), and mechanical engineering. Even when iron and other materials replaced wood in some forms of construction, it still took wood (in the form of charcoal) to smelt the metals. “In the Middle Ages,” writes the author, “around thirty pounds of wood was needed to smelt one pound of iron.” Ennos also examines the supply of wood throughout history (into the 20th century, the New World’s vast forests seemed inexhaustible), the intense labor required to move timber to manufacturing sites, and the high level of skill and focus involved in carpentry. The innovation of pig iron, cast iron, and wrought iron—all of which Ennos describes knowledgeably—transformed building into the 19th century and beyond. Yet even despite the widespread acceptance of such modern materials as steel, concrete, and plastic, as well as energy (oil), wood has continued relevance today—plywood, laminated wood, and wood pulp, among other applications. The author corrects some deforestation myths, discusses ecological disaster, and concludes with ways of "mending our strained relationship” with wood.

An excellent, thorough history in an age of our increasingly fraught relationships with natural resources.