The Book Club has decided to read and discuss: The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
Limited to Harvard Club Members and their Guests
The Book Club has decided to read and discuss: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant.
Thursday, July 23th from 6:30pm to 8:30 pm at 1327-B 21st Street, N.W.
between N and O Streets and a couple blocks south of Dupont Circle.
Call 202-445-9125 if you need additional info on location.
Bring your own food and drink.
This powerful and vexing man-versus-nature tale is set in an extraordinary place, Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands, and features two legendary individuals: a uniquely golden 300-year-old Sitka spruce and Grant Hadwin, a logger turned champion of old-growth forests who ultimately destroys what he loves. With a firm grasp of every confounding aspect of this suspenseful and disturbing story and a flair for creating arresting allegories and metaphors, Vaillant conveys a wealth of complex biological, cultural, historical, and economic information within an incisive interpretation of the essential role trees have played in human civilization. Breathtaking evocations of this oceanic realm of giant trees and epic rains give way to a homage to its ghosts, for this is the sight of a holocaust, where the creative and dauntless Haida were nearly decimated by Europeans who also clear-cut the mighty forests. It is this legacy of greed and loss that rendered the immense golden spruce, a miraculous survivor, sacred, and that drove Hadwin to cut it down. This tragic tale goes right to the heart of the conflicts among loggers, native rights activists, and environmentalists, and induces us to more deeply consider the consequences of our habits of destruction.