A complete look at America’s National Forests—their triumphs, challenges, controversies, and vital programs—and the dedicated people who keep them alive.

Winner of the Forest History Society's 2017 Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award American Indians and National Forests tells the story of how the U.S. Forest Service and tribal nations dealt with sweeping changes in forest use, ownership, and management over the last century and a half. Indians and U.S. foresters came together over a shared conservation ethic on many cooperative endeavors; yet, they often clashed over how the nation’s forests ought to be valued and cared for on matters ranging from huckleberry picking and vision quests to road building and recreation development. Marginalized in American society and long denied a seat at the table of public land stewardship, American Indian tribes have at last taken their rightful place and are making themselves heard. Weighing indigenous perspectives on the environment is an emerging trend in public land management in the United States and around the world. The Forest Service has been a strong partner in that movement over the past quarter century.

Forests for the People tells one of the most extraordinary stories of environmental protection in our nation’s history: how a diverse coalition of citizens, organizations, and business and political leaders worked to create a system of national forests in the Eastern United States. It offers an insightful and wide-ranging look at the actions leading to the passage of the Weeks Act in 1911—landmark legislation that established a system of well-managed forests in the East, the South, and the Great Lakes region—along with case studies that consider some of the key challenges facing eastern forests today. The book begins by looking at destructive practices widely used by the timber industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including extensive clearcutting followed by forest fire that devastated entire landscapes. The authors explain how this led to the birth of a new conservation movement that began simultaneously in the Southern Appalachians and New England, and describe the subsequent protection of forests in New England (New Hampshire and the White Mountains); the Great Lakes region (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), and the Southern Appalachians. Following this historical background, the authors offer eight case studies that examine critical issues facing the eastern national forests today, including timber harvesting, the use of fire, wilderness protection, endangered wildlife, oil shale drilling, invasive species, and development surrounding national park borders. Forests for the People is the only book to fully describe the history of the Weeks Act and the creation of the eastern national forests and to use case studies to illustrate current management issues facing these treasured landscapes. It is an important new work for anyone interested in the past or future of forests and forestry in the United States.

Gifford Pinchot is regarded as the father of the conservation movement. Pinchot and President Teddy Roosevelt set aside large areas and designated them public lands; these are today's National Forests.

A Conspiracy of Optimism explains the controversy now raging over the U.S. Forest Service’s management of America’s national forests. Confronted with the dual mandate of production and preservation, the U.S. Forest Service decided it could achieve both goals through more intensive management. For a few decades after World War Two, this “conspiracy of optimism” masked the fact that high levels of resource extraction were destroying forest ecosystems. The effects of intensive management—massive clear-cuts, polluted streams, declining wildlife populations, and marred scenery—initiated several decades of environmental conflict that continues to the present. Hirt documents the roots of this conflict and illuminates recent changes in administration and policy that suggest a hopeful future for federal lands.