Hardcover. Pub Date: 2012 Pages: 288 Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated A biologist reveals the secret world hidden in a single square meter of forest.In this wholly original book. Biologist David Haskell uses a one-square- meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window onto the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons. he ings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life.Each of this book's short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these. Haskell spins a illiant web of biology and ecology. explaining the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals and describing the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands-sometimes millions-of years. Each visit to the forest presents ...
"In the style of Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Thoreau, David Haskell has capture the beauty and intricacy of evolution in these pages. For those who are looking for inspiration to spend more time in the wild, this book is the perfect companion. Haskell's vast knowledge of the forest and all its creatures is the perfect guide to exploring wilderness. The prose is a perfect match for the poetic tranquillity found through the study of nature. A true naturalist's manifesto."
--Greg Graffin, author of "Anarchy Evolution"--Greg Graffin, author of"Anarchy Evolution"
"David Haskell trains his eye on a single square meter of Cumberland Plateau, and manages in the process to see the whole living planet as clearly as any writer in many years. Each chapter will teach you something new!"
--Bill McKibben, author"Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet"
\"In the style of Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Thoreau, David Haskell has capture the beauty and intricacy of evolution in these pages. For those who are looking for inspiration to spend more time in the wild, this book is the perfect companion. Haskell's vast knowledge of the forest and all its creatures is the perfect guide to exploring wilderness. The prose is a perfect match for the poetic tranquillity found through the study of nature. A true naturalist's manifesto."
--Greg Graffin, author of"Anarchy Evolution"
"Haskell leads the reader into a new genre of nature writing, located between science and poetry, in which the invisible appear, the small grow large, and the immense complexity and beauty of life are more clearly revealed." E. O. Wilson, Harvard University
"David Haskell trains his eye on a single square meter of Cumberland Plateau, and manages in the process to see the whole living planet as clearly as any writer in many years. Each chapter will teach you something new!" Bill McKibben, author "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet"
\"In the style of Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Thoreau, David Haskell has capture the beauty and intricacy of evolution in these pages. For those who are looking for inspiration to spend more time in the wild, this book is the perfect companion. Haskell's vast knowledge of the forest and all its creatures is the perfect guide to exploring wilderness. The prose is a perfect match for the poetic tranquillity found through the study of nature. A true naturalist's manifesto." Greg Graffin, author of "Anarchy Evolution"
"[Haskell] thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist." --"The New York Times""
"[Haskell] thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist."
--James Gorman, The New York Times
"Very much a contemporary biologist in his familiarity with genetics and population ecology, [Haskell] also has the voracious synthetic imagination of a 19th-century naturalist. More importantly, Mr. Haskell is a sensitive writer, conjuring with careful precision the worlds he observes and delighting the reader with insightful turns of phrase."
--The Wall Street Journal "Haskell leads the reader into a new genre of nature writing, located between science and poetry."
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E. O. Wilson, Harvard University "[Haskell's] observations--of lichens, snowflakes, salamanders, and more--are deftly interwoven with the science. His account is fascinating, whether he's stripping off in January to experience the physiological effects of severe cold, describing the symphonic sounds of trees in a high wind, or wondering at the bacteriological properties of a vulture's digestive tract."
--Nature "Mixing poetry with natural history, [Haskell] follows subtle scientific threads such as species interactions by observing the seemingly mundane--a deer track, scraps of lichens, even a golf ball--to conclusions of gratifying depth."
--Conservation Magazine
"[
The Forest Unseen] is a 'nature book, ' and a great one, but it's also and less obviously a book about human nature. You can't read its lyrical, tactile prose without confronting the whole question of our place in the natural order, and of what we're doing here. If we want to last much longer on this planet, we'll have to learn to think differently and more deeply about those things, and Haskell can be one of our guides."
--John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead 
