The exploitation of forests is a global phenomenon. Nineteenth-century North America and the modern Amazon Rainforest illustrate this.

Full introduction to the chapter Go

Selections in this chapter:

• Michael Williams, from Americans and Their Forests (1989), [174] Go
• George M. Woodwell, from “Forests at the End of the Second Millennium” in Forests in a Full World (2001), [178] Go
• Robert Pogue Harrison, from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992), [183] Go
• Alexis de Tocqueville, from Democracy in America (1835– 40), translated by Henry Reeve, [186] Go
• John Muir, from “Save the Redwoods” (published posthumously, 1920), [188] Go
• William Dietrich, from “The Cutter” in The Final Forest: The Battle for the Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest (1992), [190] Go
• Robert K. Anderberg, “Wall Street Sleaze: How the Hostile Takeover of Pacific Lumber Led to the Clear-Cutting of Coastal Redwoods” (1988), [193] Go
• Elizabeth Bishop, “Brazil, January 1, 1502” (1965), [196] Go
• Ranee K. L. Panjabi, from The Earth Summit at Rio: Politics, Economics, and the Environment (1997), [198] Go
• Thomas K. Rudel with Bruce Horowitz, from Tropical Deforestation: Small Farmers and Land Clearing in the Ecuadorian Amazon (1993), [203] Go
• Charles M. Peters, Alwyn H. Gentry, and Robert O. Mendelsohn, “Valuation of an Amazonian Rainforest” (1989), [210] Go