Reading the Forested Landscape is a bit like a cross of The Diversity of Life and Sherlock Holmes. It’s broad, about all sorts of nature like Biophilia, but also a mystery novel where the crimes often include who killed the trees. At times the book could be easy to read and others a little tedious because it was so involved. But so was Sherlock Holmes. And if you want to learn something, you need all those details.

Normally when you read about an ecosystem, the book starts with something general and likely old, maybe bedrock, maybe glaciers, but definitely something encompassing. Then it narrows down to how that impacts the ecosystem we see, the soil layers, the vegetation, the primary consumers, and so on. This book reverses that. What do you know about the soil based on the trees you see? He takes it another step further. What do you know about the previous trees (that no longer exist) based on the existing trees? Does that random stone wall in the woods tell you what kind of food was grown there a hundred years ago? It does. If you think you know a lot, you’ll probably read this and realize you don’t know nearly as much as you thought. It’s one thing to read a book about crows and say “well, of course I don’t know a lot about crows, I never studied them.” However, Tom Wessels covers so many topics that you’re happy with the rare chance to already know an item here or there. I don’t know how much research he had to do when he wrote this book, but when I met him in real life, he certainly knew his stuff like the back of his hand.