Winner of the National Arbor Day Foundation's Media Award

"Enduring Roots is beautifully written; always engaging, often lyrical. The research underlying the stories is impressive . . . . Samuels presents her stories in their historical roundness rather than spinning yarns from a few selected bits of evidence, as landscape history sometimes does. This is a competent and compelling work that encourages us to make moral choices about which stories we take to heart."-The Journal of American History

"America's forests are one of our country's great treasures. Gayle Samuels helps us see the trees and the forest in new and enduring ways."-P. Randolph Gray, Pennsylvania State Director, The Nature Conservancy

"In Enduring Roots, Gayle Samuels portrays the dynamic relationship between man and trees in a series of charming essays. [Her] careful research and poetic style have the power to make all of us look at the trees in our life with renewed appreciation and awe."-Paul W. Meyer, the F. Otto Haas Director, Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania

"An auspicious combination. Samuels writes in a pleasing, accessible style, with a blend of perceptiveness, aesthetic sensitivity, and factual knowledge that is edifying without being pedantic."-Lawrence Buell, author of The Environmental Imagination

Trees are the grandest and most beautiful plant creations on earth. From their shade-giving, arching branches and strikingly diverse bark to their complex root systems, trees represent shelter, stability, place, and community as few other living objects can.

Enduring Roots tells the stories of historic American trees, including the oak, the apple, the cherry, and the oldest of the world's trees, the bristlecone pine. These stories speak of our attachment to the land, of our universal and eternal need to leave a legacy, and demonstrate that the landscape is a gift, to be both received and, sometimes, tragically, to be destroyed.

Each chapter of this book focuses on a specific tree or group of trees and its relationship to both natural and human history, while exploring themes of community, memory, time, and place. Readers learn that colonial farmers planted marker trees near their homes to commemorate auspicious events like the birth of a child, a marriage, or the building of a house. They discover that Benjamin Franklin's Newtown Pippin apples were made into a pie aboard Captain Cook's Endeavour while the ship was sailing between Tahiti and New Zealand. They are told the little-known story of how the Japanese flowering cherry became the official tree of our nation's capital-a tale spanning many decades and involving an international cast of characters. Taken together, these and many other stories provide us with a new ways to interpret the American landscape.

"It is my hope," the author writes, "that this collection will be seen for what it is, a few trees selected from a great forest, and that readers will explore both-the trees and the forest-and find pieces of their own stories in each."

Gayle Brandow Samuels is the principal author of Women in the City of Brotherly Love . . . And Beyond.