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Rating: 
Summary: COMPLEXITY AND BEAUTY
Review: Here is a writer who conveys the complexity and beauty of nature without putting on rose colored glasses. Coming Out of the Woods inspires, entertains, informs and tells a page-turner story that reveals how all human interaction with nature demands tradeoffs. Think of it as an update of Thoreau's Walden, but with a strong story line and conclusions appropriate for our time. I recommend it highly for introductory environmental studies courses, American literature courses, or courses on literature and the environment.Orrin Pilkey James B. Duke Professor of Geology Emeritus Duke University
Rating:
Summary: Beyond Thoreau
Review: I have to admit that I approached this book with some hesitation. I did not want to read yet another polemic on the good, the bad, and the ugly in environmental politics. And much to my relief and pleasure, this book does not go in that direction. Instead, it is a compelling narrative of one man's effort to reach an accord with the dynamic and changing forest in which he has been living for over thirty years. In the process, Kaufman tests his and his friends idealized and often romanticized notions of Nature against the realities of road building, flying squirrels, and devastating hurricanes. Kaufman uses Thoreau as his touchstone, but takes the latter's two-year experiment and expands it into a life's study. As he digs the foundation of his house, he discovers the pre-history of the Morgan Branch forest; and as his lives in his completed house, he begins to understand the often harsh ecology of the place. His great past time is hunting for edible mushrooms, often in the company of his daughter. These hunts provide a paradigm for the entire book in which the ability to discern fine details makes for enjoyable eating or, in this case, reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Some 1970s idealists tried their ideas on themselves.
Review: In the 1970s when a lot of people talked about dropping out, living a simple life, being close to nature and returning to rural American values, a few actually put their ideals to the test and tried to live them. When the back-to-the-land movement burst in on rural America it shocked, scandalized, galvanized and irrevocably changed the world of farms, small towns, and traditional values. In Coming Out of the Woods I tell the story of how I became "the mayor of Hippie Town," built my own small home deep in the forest, almost blew myself up, broke my back, and began to read the land around me like a book. My daugher and I learned surprising lessons not only about nature but about people whose hopes, like my own, blossomed in those woods, then died. I like to think if Henry David Thoreau had marched to his different drummer in the woods of North Carolina instead of at Walden Pond 150 years ago , and if he had gone to live in the woods for 25 years instead of two, and if he had a daughter who accompanied him through time,he might have written Coming Out of the Woods. He didn't, so I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Dangerous Book
Review: Kaufman spends twenty years doing what all of us nature lovers think we could do-Live alone in the woods for a lifetime. Well Kaufman isn't always alone and 20 years may not be a lifetime but it is a signifcant commitment to "the simple Life." And the revelations Kaufman comes back with are not exactly what one might expect. Like modern advancements and capitalism is good for nature? Not totally, but similar to Bill Bryson's observations in his big hit A Walk in the Woods, the reality of modern enviromentalist's ideals is not always what it is cracked up to be. And I think 240 months(20 times longer than Thoreau) in the woods qualifies Kaufman as much as any body to say so. Though he lacks Bryson's swift narrative and comical anecdotes, what we gain from Kaufman is an update from Walden Pond that we might be surprised to read. The book will also help quell any idyllic thoughts you might have about dropping out of society to pursue a life in the woods. Because after finishing this book you may find that Kaufman's experience was enough.
Rating: 
Summary: 20 x Thoreau = Surprises
Review: Kaufman spends twenty years doing what all of us nature lovers think we could do-Live alone in the woods for a lifetime. Well Kaufman isn't always alone and 20 years may not be a lifetime but it is a signifcant commitment to "the simple Life." And the revelations Kaufman comes back with are not exactly what one might expect. Like modern advancements and capitalism is good for nature? Not totally, but similar to Bill Bryson's observations in his big hit A Walk in the Woods, the reality of modern enviromentalist's ideals is not always what it is cracked up to be. And I think 240 months(20 times longer than Thoreau) in the woods qualifies Kaufman as much as any body to say so. Though he lacks Bryson's swift narrative and comical anecdotes, what we gain from Kaufman is an update from Walden Pond that we might be surprised to read. The book will also help quell any idyllic thoughts you might have about dropping out of society to pursue a life in the woods. Because after finishing this book you may find that Kaufman's experience was enough.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerous Book
Review: Wallace Kaufman doesn't know what he is talking about. And it's dangerous. He talks and talks and people believe. He says things ("facts") that aren't true. In his book, he doesn't do his research, jumps to conclusions, and sends a boulder crashing through his neighbor's roof. In a similar way, he comes to conclusions about the environment, woodworking, recycling, &c. It's dangerous. Our local paper (like Kaufman I'm from Pittsboro, NC) printed a letter to the editor from a woman who had read Kaufman's new book, and believed it. Now she is sure recycling is bad for the environment and that the rain forests aren't disappearing. Here are some "facts" that aren't true, that I know enough to correct. I'm also going to give the sources of my information (unlike Kaufman). When talking about a neighbor's new porch (p. 127) he says, "'Those red oak boards will rot,' I warned him...Three years later, the boards had turned black and mushrooms began to grow out of them." He goes on to say of red oak boards that you have "to drench them with preservatives" to make them last. Now it is true that milled red oak will rot, but people make riven shingles out of red oak and they last for 30+ years without preservatives. Roy Underhill, in THE WOODWRIGHT'S COMPANION, p.154 says, "Since the splitting follows the grain of the oak from end to end, the exposed surface is made up of tiny tubes torn open down their whole length... Many folks like to shave shingles to a taper and a smooth surface. If you were to do this on a riven red-oak shingle, you would cut into the pores of the wood, open the grain, and allow it to become saturated with water, and it would rot in no time. Sawn shingles are just as bad or worse." Kaufman also talks about owl pellets (see p.148), "An owl pellet (in common language we have to call it a turd)..." An owl pellet is a bundle of hair, bones, &c. that an owl regurgitates after it's meal. However, my dictionary's definition of 'turd' is, "a piece of dung." 'Dung' led me to 'excrement', the definition being, "waste matter from the bowels." On p. 125 he says, "The house had endured because builders had selected the very best yellow pine and white oak. They had used only slow growth heartwood that is heavy with crowded annual growth rings." Back to Roy Underhill's book, THE WOODWRIGHT'S COMPANION, p16. "In pine timber slow growth and tight rings make tough, dense, strong wood, just as you might expect. In oaks, however, the effect is just the opposite. Slow growth in oak makes for weaker, more porous wood of a lower density. The reason for this is that every spring an oak has to put out a new set of leaves before the next tree or it's out of business. To get this mass of vegetation out, massive amounts of water must be run up through new plumbing that forms in the wood each spring. These large vessels form a band of constant width in every growth ring, followed by the denser, stronger wood formed during the summer growing season. The slower an oak tree grows, the closer together these bands of weaker spring wood will be. A slow grown red oak can become so porous that it appears to be 90 percent nothing." These are just things I, a 16 year old, knew enough to find fault with. It would be interesting to see what someone knowledgeable about the environment or the Native Americans would find is incorrect in Kaufman's book.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerous Book
Review: Wallace Kaufman doesn't know what he is talking about. And it's dangerous. He talks and talks and people believe. He says things ("facts") that aren't true. In his book, he doesn't do his research, jumps to conclusions, and sends a boulder crashing through his neighbor's roof. In a similar way, he comes to conclusions about the environment, woodworking, recycling, &c. It's dangerous. Our local paper (like Kaufman I'm from Pittsboro, NC) printed a letter to the editor from a woman who had read Kaufman's new book, and believed it. Now she is sure recycling is bad for the environment and that the rain forests aren't disappearing. Here are some "facts" that aren't true, that I know enough to correct. I'm also going to give the sources of my information (unlike Kaufman). When talking about a neighbor's new porch (p. 127) he says, "'Those red oak boards will rot,' I warned him...Three years later, the boards had turned black and mushrooms began to grow out of them." He goes on to say of red oak boards that you have "to drench them with preservatives" to make them last. Now it is true that milled red oak will rot, but people make riven shingles out of red oak and they last for 30+ years without preservatives. Roy Underhill, in THE WOODWRIGHT'S COMPANION, p.154 says, "Since the splitting follows the grain of the oak from end to end, the exposed surface is made up of tiny tubes torn open down their whole length... Many folks like to shave shingles to a taper and a smooth surface. If you were to do this on a riven red-oak shingle, you would cut into the pores of the wood, open the grain, and allow it to become saturated with water, and it would rot in no time. Sawn shingles are just as bad or worse." Kaufman also talks about owl pellets (see p.148), "An owl pellet (in common language we have to call it a turd)..." An owl pellet is a bundle of hair, bones, &c. that an owl regurgitates after it's meal. However, my dictionary's definition of 'turd' is, "a piece of dung." 'Dung' led me to 'excrement', the definition being, "waste matter from the bowels." On p. 125 he says, "The house had endured because builders had selected the very best yellow pine and white oak. They had used only slow growth heartwood that is heavy with crowded annual growth rings." Back to Roy Underhill's book, THE WOODWRIGHT'S COMPANION, p16. "In pine timber slow growth and tight rings make tough, dense, strong wood, just as you might expect. In oaks, however, the effect is just the opposite. Slow growth in oak makes for weaker, more porous wood of a lower density. The reason for this is that every spring an oak has to put out a new set of leaves before the next tree or it's out of business. To get this mass of vegetation out, massive amounts of water must be run up through new plumbing that forms in the wood each spring. These large vessels form a band of constant width in every growth ring, followed by the denser, stronger wood formed during the summer growing season. The slower an oak tree grows, the closer together these bands of weaker spring wood will be. A slow grown red oak can become so porous that it appears to be 90 percent nothing." These are just things I, a 16 year old, knew enough to find fault with. It would be interesting to see what someone knowledgeable about the environment or the Native Americans would find is incorrect in Kaufman's book.
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