About this title: The felling of a celebrated giant golden spruce tree in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands takes on a potent symbolism in this probing study of an unprecedented act of eco-vandalism. Vaillant profiles the culprit, an ex-logger turned messianic environmentalist who toppled the famous tree.
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Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780393058871ISBN:0393058875
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780393058871ISBN:0393058875
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co
Date Published: 2006-05-17
ISBN-13:9780393328646ISBN:0393328643
Description: Good. Some wear or creases on cover. Pages clean. Reliable seller. Fast shipping from central Texas. All international orders ship by airmail. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780393058871ISBN:0393058875
Description: Fine in ln jacket. Hardcover, Like New, clean, tight, unmarked, The felling of a celebrated giant golden spruce tree in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands takes on a potent symbolism in this probing study of an unprecedented act of eco-vandalism. First-time author Vaillant, who originally wrote about the death of the spruce for the New Yorker, profiles the culprit, an ex-logger turned messianic environmentalist who toppled the famous tree-the only one of its kind-to protest the ... read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 272 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Used copy in good condition, like new. Engrossing true story of madness, greed, the environment and the pacific northwest culture and history. The story of a man and a tree is powerful. Book was a winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, Canadian Council for the Arts. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780393328646ISBN:0393328643
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean book. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 272 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780393328646ISBN:0393328643
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Tight binding with clean text. Cover has one bent corner. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 255 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780393058871ISBN:0393058875
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. 9 1/2 h x 6 1/2w. A very interesting 255 pictorial hard cover book about the dangerous world of commerical logging and the logger turned activist, Grant Hadwin. In the heart of North America's last great forest, the west coast of Bristish Columbia where the unique Sitka spruce trees of luminous golden needles. When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. a unique Sitka spruce, 165 ... read more
"I love this book. I love it in so many different ways and on so many different levels, I hardly know how to begin. It is filled with pages and pages of description, which I tend to get annoyed with quite quickly. This book however, is one of the rare exceptions and reminds me that extended amounts of description need not be tedious and irrelevant (as in Cold Mountain- 'The bird alighted on the tree and a leaf fell and I saw that the sky was blue, with some clouds, and I looked at the tree again and then I wondered if it might rain and I saw a rabbit run by and then another leaf fell, a red leaf, blah blah blahbitty blah''. Okay that wasn't a real quote but it might as well have been) but instead can be beautiful and thought-provoking and filled with interesting information:
"A coastal forest can be an awesome place to behold: huge, holy, and eternal-feeling, like a branched and needled Notre Dame, but for a stranger it is not a particularly comfortable place to be. You can be twenty paces from a road or a beach and become totally disoriented; once inside, there is no future and no past, only the sodden, twilit now. Underfoot is a leg-breaking tangle of roots and branches and, every fifty feet or so, your way is blocked by moss-covered walls of fallen trees that may be taller than you and hundreds of feet long. These so-called nurse logs will, in turn, have colonnades of younger trees growing out of them, fifty years old and as orderly as pickets. In here, boundaries between life and death, between one species and the next, blur and blend: everything is being used as a launching pad by something else; everyone wants a piece of the sky. Down below, the undergrowth is thick, and between this and the trees, it is hard to see very far; the sound of moving water is constant, and the ground is as soft and spongy as a sofa with shot springs. You have the feeling that if you stop for too long, you will simply be grown over and absorbed by the slow and ancient riot of growth going on all around you."
The Golden Spruce is the story of the total destruction of the coastal old-growth forests described above. The flap copy of the book tells us that the golden spruce was chopped down by Grant Hadwin, a logger turned environmentalist, which makes no sense at all, until you read the book. Though the death of the tree is sad, tragic even, the author's writing left me seeing and feeling exactly what Hadwin saw, a "pet tree" used by the logging companies and the island residents to distract themselves from the destruction of the rest of the forest. As Vaillant asks, how does one punish a person who cuts down a sacred tree as an act of protest when the surrounding forest has already been felled for profit?
Note: The same day I finished reading The Golden Spruce, I also saw the movie "The New World" which is about the interactions between the native americans and the first settlers arriving at Jamestown. Which has nothing to do with the book except that the movie reminds us what the world looked like before there was any industry, when every forest and marsh and river was perfect and when humans lived as brothers and sisters with the natural world. It is a deeply painful and beautiful movie that everyone should see."
"Who would have thought that a 239 page book on the cutting down of a tree could be so interesting? In a Jon Krakauer style, the author intertwines Pacific Northwest history, native culture, the logging industry and one man's madness into an educational, easy to read, "look what we've gone and done!" novel."
"In my opinion John Valliant's book is improperly equated to Krakauer's works. I believe this is done as a marketing effort. The considerable difference is in the main subject of the work - in Krakauer's it's the man, in Valliant's it's the Nature.
This book is a manifesto, a cry for worldwide attention of the destruction forces of human nature, against the mindless consumerism that exterminates the landmarks of the natural world.
I loved this book. I enjoyed reading about the intricacies of a profession, which claims more lives each year than many other high risk jobs. I was captured in the narrative on the delicate nature of this very complex organism - the tree. I was amazed to learn of another miracle of the Earth - the Golden Spruce, this landmark of biology that survived despite all odds. I was saddened to find out of yet another disappearing Indian nation, that of the Haidas.
Beautifully written, containing a wealth of information on an industry I knew little about, it narrates a story about the act of a sick man and his effort to attract worldwide attention to the right issue via the wrong deed. But in the end, the story begs the question - Is sometimes the sword mightier than the pen? You decide, reader.
This book is wonderful and should be on the reading list of all high schools. Young adults must learn about the consequences of logging, the result of defaced lands and their effect on the world's environment."
"While a good book in its own right, I felt The Golden Spruce suffered from a lack of focus. The side-stories, though appealing, fail to satisfy upon their fruition and largely detract from what would otherwise be an excellent story.
Apart form these imperfections, The Golden Spruce is written in neat and concise prose and is every bit the page-turner.
The Golden Spruce is one of the first books I've read that actually acknowledges that the west has a tendency to depict the Native as a supreme nature-loving individual, and not the human being that he is. The Haida, the book claims, were instrumental in the destruction of the otter population along the the west coast, and regularly raided adjacent tribes, not to mention the European settlers. Murder and thieving was a normal part of life for the Haida--just as it was for primitive peoples throughout the world."
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