Book Review: White Pine

White Pine: American History and the Tree that Made a Nation
Andrew Vietze
Nature, history

To be honest, White Pine isn't really a great book. I liked it anyway.

This is the kind of book that you get when you combine an author with a deep, idiosyncratic interest in a subject with a lack of high-powered editing. White Pine isn't about Pinus strobus in general. It's about what interests Andrew Vietze, and what interests Andrew Vietze is (a) New England, and (b) the history of the tree's importance in colonial and revolutionary times. Which, to be fair, is pretty interesting! White pines were the premier trees used for making masts for the Royal Navy, and so they were constant flashpoints for royal decrees and local dissent. The broad arrow used to mark trees reserved for the King became such a hated symbol that many early revolutionary flags bore a pine tree as a mark of defiance.

That history takes up about two-thirds of White Pine. There's then a sort of middle-of-the-book epilogue chapter that drifts lightly across the nineteenth century, a couple of chapters of contemporary reportage, and a summation. An opinionated editor, looking at this, would say that White Pine is either too much or too little concentrated on colonial New England. Too much, if it's intended to be a general biography-of-a-substance book; too little, if it's intended to be about that specific time and place.

And yet the book is kind of charming. It's written in an agreeable, readable tone, with some nice personal touches. The history is genuinely illuminating--it's a great window into a little-known but very evocative microcosm of the tensions that led to the American Revolution. There are some lively characters, some famous names, some natural history. 

Andrew Vietze, in short, loves his subject maybe a little too much. There are worse flaws.