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Rating: 
Summary: A balanced view
Review: "I hope you read it [the book] for whatever understanding it provides. Then, when you get a chance, go and read the living things that it came from."
This, the last sentence in the book, powerfully wraps up an engrossing examination of both sides of the controversy on logging old-growth forests. Always on the side of the environmentalists, I came to understand and sympathize with the loggers who cut them down. Not an easy task for any writer to undertake. But Dietrich has done it, and done it well. No wonder he won a Pulitzer Prize. The writing is clear and sharp, and at times, poetic in imagery. Yes, I have been to the Olympic old-growth forests of which he speaks, and he is right when he says that the minute you enter them, there is magic. Even the loggers feel this. The stories of individuals, both on the side of timber and the side of trees, eloquently speak of passions and lifestyles, battles won and lost. Anita Goos is not someone I will soon forget. Dietrich tells of men and women who choose their battles, sometimes unwillingly, but who enter the fray with hearts and minds wholly in the cause.
It is well to follow this book with "The Hidden Forest" by Jon Luoma, written seven years later.
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Summary: Brings a forest into your home, where ever it is
Review: Dietrich was introduced to me while I was visiting the Hoh Valley rainforest in Olympic National Park in Washington. Being inside a rainforest was a life-changing experience and Dietrich's 'Final Forest' consolidated all the feelings for me. His well-written account of Pacific Northwest landscape, past and current, along with the excruciating fight to save whatever is left, is important for current and future generations to elevate their cognizance towards environmental stewardship.
Rating:
Summary: All sides of the story
Review: I gained a deeper understanding of the conflicts surrounding forestry in the Pacific Northwest. The stories told in this book could never be explained or understood in a 30 second television news broadcast. And while much of the news is depressing, this book offers hope for a brighter future where science, conservation, forestry, and consumer interests can meet for the future use of our forest resources.
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Summary: this book is great!
Review: I read this book for my research paper on old growth forests. Originally I was going to just try to fly through it and take out the information that I needed for my paper, but as I read it I got really into it and almost forgot about my paper altogether! I think the best thing about this book is that it represents all sides of the issue. William Dietrich talks to cutters, truck drivers, biologists, environmentalists, foresters, and the community itself and tells all sides of the situation in his book. When I originally chose to do my paper on preservation of old growth forests, I was completely against cutting down of trees, and even though I am still not exactly for it, this book really helped me to be more open-minded and understand the different point of views...
Rating: 
Summary: A Usefully Complex Treatment of a Complex Issue
Review: Natural resource management, like abortion, is one of those enormously complex political issues that too often gets reduced to dueling slogans and sound bites. William Dietrich does readers a great service by letting people from all sides of the issue (there are many more than two) speak at length, and by juxtaposing their views in ways that highlight similarities as well as differences. One of the book's running themes is that both loggers and environmentalists love the forests, but that each group has great difficulty seeing that quality in the other. Their mutual incomprehension is rooted in their utterly different ideas of why forests are important, and how humans ought to relate to them.This deep philosophical difference is at least as old as the 20th century. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the US Forest Service, fought battles similar to the ones Dietrich describes back at the (last) turn of the century. Dietrich, a journalist writing about a present-day controversy, says very little about that history, and that choice makes the book less informative (and less helpful as a means to understanding the problem) than it might be. Still, _The Final Forest_ is a valuable, well-balanced piece of journalism. It's a great resource for open-minded people on either side of the preservation vs. development debate, and a superb introduction for anyone coming to the issue for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: A Usefully Complex Treatment of a Complex Issue
Review: Natural resource management, like abortion, is one of those enormously complex political issues that too often gets reduced to dueling slogans and sound bites. William Dietrich does readers a great service by letting people from all sides of the issue (there are many more than two) speak at length, and by juxtaposing their views in ways that highlight similarities as well as differences. One of the book's running themes is that both loggers and environmentalists love the forests, but that each group has great difficulty seeing that quality in the other. Their mutual incomprehension is rooted in their utterly different ideas of why forests are important, and how humans ought to relate to them. This deep philosophical difference is at least as old as the 20th century. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the US Forest Service, fought battles similar to the ones Dietrich describes back at the (last) turn of the century. Dietrich, a journalist writing about a present-day controversy, says very little about that history, and that choice makes the book less informative (and less helpful as a means to understanding the problem) than it might be. Still, _The Final Forest_ is a valuable, well-balanced piece of journalism. It's a great resource for open-minded people on either side of the preservation vs. development debate, and a superb introduction for anyone coming to the issue for the first time.
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