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Title: Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians by Scott Weidensaul ISBN: 1-55591-139-0 Publisher: Fulcrum Pub Pub. Date: August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Masterpiece of Appalachian Natural History
Comment: This collection of beautifully-crafted essays should be required reading in all Appalachian Studies classes. When readers tell me that they enjoy the natural history references in my Ballad novels, I urge them to read Scott Weidensaul. This wonderful book traces the natural history of the Appalachian Mountains all the way from Alabama to New Brunswick, Canada. In clear and lyrical prose, Weidensaul describes the formation of the mountain chain, touching on plate tectonics and the configuration of the prehistoric continents. Several chapters describe the plants and animals past and present which make for the unique ecosystem that is Appalachia: the use of the mountains as a migration path for birds and monarch butterflies; the 20th century chestnut blight which destroyed a species of tree, and the extermination of the passenger pigeon. With a keen understanding of nature and an obvious love of the land, Scott Weidensaul writes a guide to the mountains that is both informative and enchanting.
Rating: 5
Summary: truly excellent book on Appalachian natural history
Comment: Scott Weidensaul has produced with "Mountains of the Heart" one of the finest examples of popular natural history writing I have ever seen. Thorough and authoritative, yet an easy read and quite engaging, he tackles an immensense subject with enthusiasm and obvious experience. Discussing the geology, ecology, fauna, flora, and conservation of the entire Appalachian mountain chain from central Alabama to Belle Isle, Newfoundland, you will never find a better book on the subject.
In reading the book I have learned so much about the natural history of this great eastern wilderness. Unlike many other natural history books which discuss faraway, exotic lands like Antarctica, Thailand, the Amazon jungle, or the Australian Outback, Weidensaul makes an area where I live in fascinating, bringing to my attention a variety of things I never even suspected, making this book a unique treasure. An area I took for granted, had lost my sense of wonder about now seems new and interesting to me. I am sure those reading this review would be similarly enlightened.
No you say? Do you know why leaves change color in fall, and how? Or why some trees turn one colors while others don't? Do you know what effect this leaf change has on the animal community in forests (ever hear of foliar fruit flagging?)? Did you know that many Appalachian tree species can survive winter temperatures as low as 80 degrees below zero, far colder than the mountains ever get today? Do you know what tannin is, and why trees produce it, and what effects this has on the forest community? Weidensaul makes what to me was a fairly mundane subject, perhaps suitable for a grade school science book, fascinating and weird. Trees are rightly one of the stars in this book, as Weidensaul recounts the sad tale of the American chestnut, the plight of the Fraser fir, the role of oaks in modern forests (and the potential problems their predominance could cause), and the magnifence of the white pine among many other plants.
However, animals receive a great deal of attention in this book as well, as by no means it is only about botany. Almost an entire chapter is devoted to the awe-inspiring annual hawk migrations down the length of the Appalachians. The many unique and highly local species of the mountains salamander fauna, one of the richest in the world, are recounted in great detail. Another unique fauna, the mussel fauna, again one of the world's richest, is also discussed, a subject not much to the lay naturalist. Weidensaul discusses some of the chain's fauna winners - such as black bears, successfully co-exisiting with people in crowded Pennsylvania, moose, which are rebounding in the northern Appalachians, and the raven, formerly a bird of deep wilderness but that one that is increasingly adapting to disturbed habitat - and its losers as well - such as brook trout, a species in decline in all but the most pristine streams, the red wolf, long gone from most of the range and yet to be successfully reintroduced, and the passenger pigeon, once a the most common land bird in the world, thriving on the vast crop of acorns in the Appalachians, now extinct.
A truly excellent book with nice illustrations in it, this will please any lover of natural history.
Rating: 5
Summary: A lesson in natural history, ecology, and connectedness
Comment: If someone assigned you the task of writing a history of the Appalachian Mountains, how would you organize it? Keep the information in its separate realms of geology, botany, zoology, and anthropology? Start in Alabama and work northward? Go state by state, province by province, and look at the smaller specific mountain ranges? Well, Scott Weidensaul has taken none of those approaches, thank goodness. His is an education by general themes: basic geology (for it must start there), bird migrations, habitat specialization, forestry, mammalian zoology, archaeology, pollination, extinction, survival. Each chapter has a pure focus; and yet all of the chapters somehow touch on all of these topics. Weidensaul's conversational style has the reader walking through the woods with him, chatting seemingly aimlessly, all the time seeing and learning about the life that abounds. Gems of detail sneak up on us while we read. If you travel 1000 feet up, the habitat and ecosystems change as if you had traveled 100 miles north. Wow. And then there are the interspecies connections, some well-known and some new to us: squirrels and oaks, oaks and gypsy moths, migratory birds and fatty fruits, white pines and ship masts, bears and wetlands, fishers and porcupines, crossbills and spruces. The natural world makes sense after reading this book. Highly recommended for naturalists everywhere and mandatory reading for residents of the Appalachian states and provinces.
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Title: The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species by Scott Weidensaul ISBN: 0374246645 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 15 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul ISBN: 0865475911 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: A Field Guide to Eastern Trees (Peterson Field Guides) by Janet Wehr, George A. Petrides, Roger Tory Peterson ISBN: 0395904552 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Tracking and the Art of Seeing 2e : How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign by Paul Rezendes ISBN: 0062735241 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Hope is the Thing With Feathers by Christopher Cokinos ISBN: 0446677493 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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