Fifty Books Every Forester Should Read
Periodically, you will find SAF, or some other organization, polling members to develop the definitive reading list. The assumption is that consensus or popularity can be definitive. Few, if any, who participate in these polls, will have read all of the books that show up on the list. Fewer still ever will read them. Even fewer will have the breathe of reading to make such a conjecture as to what should or should not be read. As a result, so-called popular “classics†like Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac show up on these lists like the pesky garden weeds that must be pulled year after year. If you are looking for a list of these, check out the Journal of Forestry, you won’t find them here. What you will find here is a distillation of almost thirty years of constant reading and avid book searching and collecting. After plowing through almost 900 books, distilling the list down to 50 has taken some great thought. Not all of the books are forestry oriented, some aren’t even biological or natural history. All have greatly influenced my thought at the time I read them or continually since then. All fifty books are important and rather than give any false impressions about the importance of one over the other, the books are arranged chronologically. This list is not definitive, you would have to read all 900 and counting books to be definitive (Someday I’ll get that list posted here as well). This list is strictly my opinion and subject to change as another good book comes along. As you will discover, there are some authors that I am simply infatuated with and several of their titles appear. One might argue that such a short list should attempt to be broad and limited to one contribution per author. That implies that all authors should be read which is definitely not the case. I should also point out, through my own ignorance, the list is largely limited to English books. A few, which have been translated, such as Busgen and Munch’s definitive work on tree structure, are included, but I have been at the mercy of translators and what they felt was important to translate. As time allows, I might annotate the list, but would rather you rely on my opinion that it is a great book rather than my personal interpretation of the book. As a final note, I will accept no criticism of this list until you have read all fifty, then you might be authoritative enough to critic the list, but most likely you will be persuaded that this is a pretty damn good list. Enjoy!
The Books:
By the way, if you are interested in seeing any of these books, I now have them on display in my office.
Since this list is dynamic as I encounter new books, some books come and some books go. The books that go are still great books with lots of significance to them in my life, they have just moved out of the top 50. Here is a list of books that once occupied a space on the list, but have since been replaced by newer read books.
