The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires [Hardcover]

A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have madeand resistedRussias many empires. Elegant and informative . . . Pinkhams The Oak and the Larch is an inventive study of Russias cultural practices and its reigning mythologies. Pinkham, an academic and writer, creates an enthralling portrait of Russia through its forests, artfully combining environmental and cultural history, folklore, literature, and much more. [An] expansive, often absorbing study of the role of the wilderness in the Russian imagination . . . Pinkham is at her sharpest when examining the Soviet era and its aftermath. . . There is some striking nature writing here  Pinkhams reporting on self-taught wolf researchers who live in pristine isolation near the Russian-Finnish border is especially vivid. Fascinating . . . . [ This is a clever way to retell Russian history from a new and revealing perspective. Perceptive, wide-ranging, and gracefully written, The forest has been friend and enemy, sanctuary and prison, zone of industry and realm of the spirit. Sophie Pinkham gives us not just a new way to see Russian history but an unexpected source of inspiration for renewing our own relationship with the natural world. For Sophie Pinkham, Russias forests contain everything: animals and spirits, legends and fairytales, seeds of the worlds greatest novels, whole histories of political repression and revolution, and hope for a radically post-national future. Sophie Pinkhams book, drawing on a range of disciplines, from history to folklore, ecology to economics, and written with sophistication and wit, presents Russia and its empires in a dramatically new light. A revelation that entertains as much as it enlightens. In this epic but sprightly history, journalist and critic Pinkham explores the central role forests have played in the Russian cultural imagination. . . Among the many salient through lines she identifies . . .Pinkham draws eloquently on Russias wrl#Ê