Wood: Craft, Culture, History

By Harvey Green

Book Overview

Harvey Green's authoritative and fascinating book explores wood's natural and human history, celebrates its myriad forms and possibilities, and suggests the crucial roles wood has played in an extraordinary range of human endeavours. Wood matters in the human scheme, and Green understands it both as a historian and as a woodworker, whether he's admiring the humble utility of plywood or the flights of fancy unleashed by the prized whorls of bird's-eye maple. This book has rewards for all those who prize wood as a substance, appreciate its amazing history, or are concerned about its future.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670038016
• ISBN13: 9780670038015
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.6" x 6.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Excellent overview

I can appreciate the other reviews criticisms that this is an ambitious book. Green seems quite conscious of this fact in his writing. Instead of making an attempt to cover every complexity of the topic, he selects several diverse examples to demonstrate the ubiquity and importance of wood. This work is worth a read for any craftsman or student of material culture.

Material issues

An interesting book which is difficult to pigeon-hole in any particular category. Not precisely a history book, yet it examines the history of wood, and its importance and symbolism to different times and cultures. I found it a little long winded, and yet there is much of interest here, such as the history of wood in sporting equipment, hunting and war weapons, housing, religion, furniture, musical instruments, etc. Chock a block full of quaint facts and sharp insight, I would recommend this book. One of those books which will make you appreciate much of the world around you normally taken for granted.