The Age of Wood
Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization
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Narrated by:
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Dennis Boutsikaris
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By:
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Roland Ennos
About this listen
A “smart and surprising” (Booklist) “expansive history” (Publishers Weekly) detailing the role that wood and trees have played in our global ecosystem — including human evolution and the rise and fall of empires — in the best-selling tradition of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and Mark Kurlansky’s Salt.
As the dominant species on Earth, humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos shows for the first time that the key to our success has been our relationship with wood.
“A lively history of biology, mechanics, and culture that stretches back 60 million years” (Nature) The Age of Wood reinterprets human history and shows how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has profoundly shaped our bodies and minds, societies, and lives. Ennos takes us on a sweeping journey from Southeast Asia and West Africa where great apes swing among the trees, build nests, and fashion tools; to East Africa where hunter gatherers collected their food; to the structural design of wooden temples in China and Japan; and to Northern England, where archaeologists trace how coal enabled humans to build an industrial world. Addressing the effects of industrialization — including the use of fossil fuels and other energy-intensive materials to replace timber — The Age of Wood not only shows the essential role that trees play in the history and evolution of human existence, but also argues that for the benefit of our planet we must return to more traditional ways of growing, using, and understanding trees.
A brilliant blend of recent research and existing scientific knowledge, this is an “excellent, thorough history in an age of our increasingly fraught relationships with natural resources” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
©2020 Roland Ennos. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
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The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
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Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
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Dark Emu
- Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?
- By: Bruce Pascoe
- Narrated by: Bruce Pascoe
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been understated in modern retellings of Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.
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One of the best books ever!!!!
- By Matt Powers on 05-07-18
By: Bruce Pascoe
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Cro-Magnon
- How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama.
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Fact and fiction
- By Paul on 08-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
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How to Invent Everything
- A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler
- By: Ryan North
- Narrated by: Ryan North
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past...and then broke? How would you survive? With this book as your guide, you'll survive - and thrive - in any period in Earth's history. Best-selling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North tells you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted - from first principles. This manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up.
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Get the book
- By Tim McNerney on 11-26-18
By: Ryan North
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
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The Tree
- A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter
- By: Colin Tudge
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
- By E. Miller on 04-28-17
By: Colin Tudge
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Ancient Bones
- Unearthing the Astonishing New Story of How We Became Human
- By: Madelaine Böhme
- Narrated by: Aimée Ayotte
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Africa has long been considered the cradle of life - where life and humans evolved - but somewhere west of Munich, Germany, paleoclimatologist and paleontologist Madelaine Böhme and her team make a discovery that is beyond anything they ever imagined: the 12-million-year-old bones of an ancient ape - Danuvius guggenmos - which makes headlines around the world and defies prevailing theories of human history and where human life began.
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Brave Attempt
- By Bill Treat on 10-15-22
By: Madelaine Böhme
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Biomimicry
- Innovation Inspired by Nature
- By: Janine M. Benyus
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes listeners into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; and many more examples.
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Dated but good
- By stephen taylor on 09-05-21
By: Janine M. Benyus
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Energy
- A Human History
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford.
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No more accents, please!
- By Ned Gulley on 08-30-18
By: Richard Rhodes
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The Statues That Walked
- Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island
- By: Terry Hunt, Carl Lipo
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works?
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The "Mystery of Easter Island" remains raveled
- By Diane on 09-14-12
By: Terry Hunt, and others
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Too little information too much brag and biography
- By Thomas B. on 04-28-21
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Audiobook Version is the Best!
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The Fabric of Civilization
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Pop journalism article lengthened into a book
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The Grid
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The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.
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A disappointment
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What listeners say about The Age of Wood
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sam E.
- 02-14-21
lots to learn from a scientist about wood!
this is a very knowledgeable author - a good read I can recommend to just about anyone
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1 person found this helpful
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- SushiXpress
- 07-14-24
Important book for recovering our lost relationship to wood
This was a great book and the author makes a solid point at the end. It offered so many insights regarding how we got to where we are vis-a-vis wood as well as clear direction for how to restore this most important relationship to our planet
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- Whitney Curry
- 11-08-21
good "read"
it was interesting. very salt like in detail. the use of "one or ones" was a little weird throughout the book by a writer. very informative and well researched.
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- zstreetmama
- 02-29-24
Well researched and presented
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Looking forward to listening to it a second time or buying it in print (a product of wood) ;-)
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- Chris Kadrmas
- 03-21-24
Excellent read/listen!
Well written and interesting blend of history and science. Easy voice to hear by the narrator as well, in my opinion. More from this author!
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- Richard Yates
- 08-03-21
Great text; poor narration
The Age of Wood explores the history of humans' relationship with wood and the ways it has shaped civilization. It is a polymath's delight and Roland Ennos weaves effortlessly through a wide range of topics all related to wood.
The narration, however, falls considerably short. A fundamental skill of good readers is to have a logical and graceful modulation of the voice, at all scales of time, that illuminates and clarifies the text. This skill is so fundamental that it is surprising to encounter a professional reader who seems oblivious to aspects of his own voice modulation.
The narrator of The Age of Wood is an upspeaker. He habitually ends sentences with a higher pitch on the last accented syllable of nearly every sentence. And the pitch that he hits is identical every time. While this technique is entirely reasonable in situations where an arc or continuity is desired between two or more sentences, his use of it is pervasive and eventually excruciating.
On the timescale of a chapter, there is a gradual and imperceptible raising of the pitch so that over the short pause from one chapter to the next, and presumably a new recording session, his voice drops precipitously. This provides a rare respite, even comic relief, from the inexorable pattern that soon resumes.
I apologize to listeners who may have not noticed such things in book narration and now are doomed to a new awareness if they listen to The Age of Wood.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Spencer Brown
- 02-03-21
Riveting, informative, and timely
Absolutely loved it. From start to finish, I could barely put it down. Might even try to learn some carpentry.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 12-12-21
odd cadence and pauses, but good overall
like others have said the narrator has an odd cadence. it can at times be distracting. there's also off pauses. to the point I have checked my phone thinking I was receiving a call. but the story is good and certainly worth the time to listen
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3 people found this helpful
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- Mare
- 04-21-21
Magnificent Wood
Oh what a great book! It was slow going only because there is so much fabulous information packed into just one or two sentences. The author is a walking dictionary of terms that I had long forgotten. The background startled me and I hung on every word. This story of wood is actually a page turner, similar to a great mystery. You judst cannot put it down. What are the next series of secrets he will reveal? A surprise war preceded the Boston Tea Party.?...never heard of it before. I learned so much in this book that sometimes my head hurt. Yes, a scientific background helps but none the less, it is a book that has to be readm all, it is that kind of good.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-26-21
The anthropology of wood!
A great treatise on wood, making me rethink the stone age, iron age, etc. Powerfully and interestingly backed up by quantification and sources. Highly recommended. I wooden kid you haha.
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