The Power of Trees

As we witness the daily destruction of forests, a sadness afflicts the roots of the soul. This book by the psychologist and ecologist Michael Pearlman is the first to connect trees' symbolism with the personal meaning of their beauty-and their loss in hurricanes, forest fires, clear-cut timberlands, and wars.

Perlman goes beyond the psychological interpretations of trees in myths and fairy tales. Rather, like Studs Terkel, he interviews and reports what actual people think and feel about the trees they know. Their words resonate alongside the trees of mythology, literature, poetry, and psychoanalysis: Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Mari Evans, Homer, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, C.G. Jung, Aldo Leopold, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, Tim O'Brien, Rainer Maria Rilke, Harold Searles, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michel Tournier, and Walt Whitman