This is a book that people love and remember for many different reasons. I recently came across a 1998 article in the journal "Bioscene," called "Trees at the Center" by Maura Flannery, a professor of biology at St. John's University who writes widely about science education.

Flannery says: "I read May Watts's Reading the Landscape of America years ago, and it remains one of my favorite books. There are several chapters on trees, but the one that has always stuck most firmly in my mind is the very first, on magnolias in the Great Smoky Mountains. In a lovely and accessible discussion of plant morphology and evolution, Watts explains why the magnolia is considered such an ancient species; why its flower form is considered primitive. She also discusses the remains of ice-age forests found on the upper slopes of the Smokies and the problem of trying to preserve these forests from human intruders."

The chapter referred to is "In Search of Antiques, or The Forests of the Great Smoky Mountains." Its title evokes for me the image of the author standing by a Tennessee roadside at dusk, cupping a luminous white magnolia flower in her hands, and imagining the dawn of flowering life on earth. This is typical of May Theilgaard's writing--highly observant, imaginative, she sees deeply beyond the surface of things and teaches us to see more, also.

I am thrilled that this book has been reprinted and recommend it to all who want to write about nature or who would become Ecologists or Naturalists. Watts writes with so much descriptive clarity that the scene and the natural occurances seem to come immediately to life on these pages. I have been to some of the areas she writes about and have a far more succinct appreciation for these landscapes. Should be recommended reading for every student of nature.

I have just finished reading a library copy of "Reading the Landscape". I enjoyed the book so much that I just had to have a copy of my own. May Watts was both a splendidly observant naturalist-scientist and a delightful writer as well. And boy...did I get a kick out of her little sketches...they're so great!

If you are a lover of nature or nature writing, then this is a book for you. In a series of short essays Ms Watts describes her field trips across America, from the plains to the coasts, from the mountains to the deserts. In each location she comments on the interaction between the land and the types of plants found there. As Ms. Watts indicates it is often the plantlife that creates and molds the underlying landscape.

In one of my favorite essays, she describes a train trip taken on January 1, 1954. Leaving Chicago at twilight, she notes the changing landscape seen through the train window on the way to Denver on that cold winter night. Her descriptions are accompanied by a series of little sketches showing the changing silhouettes of trees and homesteads as she leaves the city and outlying suburbs for the prairie farms of the heartland. In another essay, she attempts to date the age of an old abandoned country schoolhouse by observing the trees and other plants surrounding it. Sort of like a botanical Sherlock Holmes.

May Watts' writing style always places the reader on the trail beside her whether examining the building of a sand dune or the ecology of a bog. She comes across like a scholarly botanist who also happens to be your favorite aunt. "Reading the Landscape" is the perfect book for those rainy weekends or cold winter nights when the naturalist is stuck inside.

Dr. Bill Marszalec

This teriffic little book is paper, lightweight -- and can identify nearly every tree I threw at it! (Comon, we're talking about trees in the outdoors, not funny thinks they've imported at the nursery!)

Tree Finder is an expert system reduced to a simple booklet. Look at the leaf, find the picture on page zz, which asks a diagnostic question and directs you to one of several other pages, depending on the answer. In three or four page turns, you have a positive tree identification. Nifty! Hey, even fun!!

I bought Tree Finders for all my outdoor friends --they all loved it and now carry The Tree Book on hikes.

Pick up a used copy of this charming book. You'll be glad you did. Author May Theilgaard Watts' mottos, as a naturalist, teacher, poet, and keen observer of the ways in which we human beings shape our world, could have been, "everything is connected to everything else," and, "everything tells a story." Reading her descriptions of the landscapes of Europe is like travelling with an extremely knowledgeable, funny, curious, and opinionated guide. How I wish I could have been there with her, but the book is a wonderful treat on its own. She visits seven countries, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Britain. The local landscapes she considers are well worn, shaped over centuries by humans and nature. She draws on botany, geography, literature, astronomy, and history, to explain why a place looks, smells, and feels the way it does, and to give us a sense of the soul of the place. In "A Vocabulary of the British Landscape," she explains the natural and human history of moors and heaths, wealds and downs--and the ecology of a bomb crater in London. Her pen and ink drawings are delightful. At the end of the book is a key to the trees of Europe, similar to her well-known key to American trees, the Tree Finder. Full disclosure: I am the author's granddaughter, and current publisher of her book, Reading the Landscape of America.