Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114948 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

The Sunday Times, September 2007
"Cohu intertwines history, poetry, folklore and hardcore botany with the deftness of a master coppicer... A book to relish while burning hand-hewn logs in an open fire..."

The Guardian, September 2007
"Cohu's book is unlike any other tree book I have come across... I never knew walking with trees could be so entertaining."

Synopsis
Can you identify that tree outside the window? Probably not. Most of us don't know an oak from a sycamore, let alone a beech from a birch. It's time to turn over a new leaf..."Out of the Woods" is an affectionate, convivial guide to Britain's 50 commonest trees, in which Will Cohu takes you on a revelatory journey - from the wildest woodland to municipal carpark, via field hedgerow and orchard garden. Stunningly illustrated by Mungo McCosh, this is a book to reconnect you with your roots. Read it, and those anonymous structures of wood and leaves will become friends, while every walk will have something of a miniature epic about it: an adventure into the landscape of our history, too long ignored.

Customer Reviews

Whimsical, fascinating tree lore
The reader is taken on a humorous and educational walk, metaphorically leaving the car in the lay-by and venturing into the woods beyond. We are encouraged to look at the trees around us in a new way. The ash, for example, is a "bisexual-transsexual-hermaphrodite creature", a "mad old bastard dancing in the nude". The Gingko, we are reminded, may have been around for 250 million years, and its genetic composition enabled several to survive Hiroshima. We are told how the wood from each tree smells when it burns, oak apparently resembling "kippers and bacon overlaid with single malt". I read this book in small doses over several months. It is thoroughly entertaining, amusing and informative rather than primarily a guide to identification.

Nice idea let down just a bit by the production
Another aspiring 'attractive little book' with nice illustrations. This author's way with words is informative, entertaining and indeed arresting, but they are entitled to better typographical treatment than they got, and so is the reader -- this one was quite distracted by it. Looks as if 'typeset' in a hurry using a word-processing program by someone with absolutely no feel for the task. In particular the Revision Quizzes (is that the plural?) feature headings immediately preceding column- or page-breaks, and in many cases actually split in half by them. That aside (and maybe I'm too picky, I have edited out the full tirade!) a very enjoyable book.

For the old wise oak...
This book is made for sleepy winter afternoons when the light fades in a cold cloudless sky. There is not an offensive, challenging or pretentious line in this book. It is a fine collection of solid facts and anecdotes all woven carefully into a patchwork of little diversionary stories. Even the more serious of tree enthusiasts will take from this book a different perspective on that lonely old ash tree outside their work. It's funny, accessible, gentle to beginners and adorned with wonderful woodblock prints.

Anyone who likes trees or maybe has forgotten they do so should have this.