NONFICTION - Oct. 30, 1994

TREES AND PEOPLE by Richard N. Jordan. (Regnery Publishing: $22.95; 269 pp.) “Trees, wherever they are found,” writes Jordan in this annoying book, “should not be left on their own. They are a part of our being. To ignore the care of our forestland ecosystems makes no more sense than to ignore the health care of people.” Well. A representative of the Forest Products Industry for several decades, Jordan has written this book, he writes, to find a middle ground between environmentalists and foresters. But this rhetoric dissolves from whence it came after about eight pages, when Jordan commences whining about how nobody understands the forest products industry, how everyone calls them the wrong names, how the media uses words such as timber when they should use “forest products.” In reality, they are angels of mercy who have, out of the kindness of their hearts and their love for trees, “been able to achieve a miracle by supplying the essential daily needs of our society,” in spite of increasingly absurd legislation and greedy environmental groups just out to make a buck, to milk the emotions of the public. Common ground indeed. I’d like to tell you that there’s a nice section in here on the history of tree-related legislation, but it’s hard because it’s just so frustrating to have one’s time wasted by this kind of double-speak.