The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed - Hardcover

9780393058871: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 

A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth.

As vividly as Jon Krakauer put readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest, where trees grow to eighteen feet in diameter, sunlight never touches the ground, and the chainsaws are always at work.

When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.

The tree, a fascinating puzzle to scientists, was sacred to the Haida, a fierce seafaring tribe based in the Queen Charlottes. Vaillant recounts the bloody history of the Haida and the early fur trade, and provides harrowing details of the logging industry, whose omnivorous violence would claim both Hadwin and the golden spruce.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap:
In the tradition of Krakauer's Into the Wild, The Golden Spruce tells an astonishing true story of a furious man's obsessive mission against an industrial juggernaut, the struggle of the Haida people to save their world, and the mysterious golden tree that binds them all together.
When a kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited Alaskan island just north of the Canadian border, they re-ignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest that made international news. On a winter night in 1997, a logger-turned-activist named Grant Hadwin plunged into the frigid waters of the Yakoun River in the Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw behind him. When he was done, a unique spruce tree -- 50 meters tall and covered with luminous golden needles -- was teetering on its massive stump.
The tree, which baffled scientists, was sacred to the Haida on whose land it had stood for over 300 years. It was also beloved by local loggers who singled it out for protection in the midst of vast clear cuts. Since the 1970s, the mist-shrouded archipelago -- one of the continent's most pristine and vibrant ecosystems -- has been a battleground with government officials and logging companies squaring off against the Haida and environmental groups. The loss of the mythic golden spruce united loggers, natives and environmentalists in sorrow and outrage. But while heroic efforts were made to revive the tree, Grant Hadwin, the tree's confessed killer, disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
John Vaillant's article on the death of the golden spruce was published in 2002 in "The New Yorker, and this book has grown out of it, dramatizing the destruction of a deeply conflicted man and thewilderness he loved; in so doing, it traces the rise, fall and rebirth of the Haida nation, and exposes the logging industry -- the most dangerous land-based job in North America -- from a point of view never explored in contemporary non-fiction.

"To look at this seedling -- if one could see it at all -- and believe that it had every intention of growing into one of the towering columns that blot out so much of the northwestern sky, would have seemed far-fetched at best. In its first year, the infant tree would have been about two inches tall and sporting a half dozen or so pale green needles. It would have been appealing in the same abstract way that baby snapping turtles are, its alien appearance transcended by the universal indicators of wild babyhood: utter helplessness and primordial determination in equal measure. Despite its bristling ruff and a stem as straight as a sunbeam, the seedling was still as vulnerable as a frog's egg; a falling branch, the footstep of a human or an animal -- any number of random occurrences -- could have finished it there and then.
Down there, in the damp darkness of the under story, the sapling's wonderful flaw was a well-kept secret. With each passing year, it dug its roots deeper into the riverbank, strengthening its grip on life and on the land. In spite of the odds, it became one of a handful of young trees that would survive to shoulder their way into the sunlight, competing with giants a dozen feet wide and hundreds of feet tall. In the end, it would be the sun that exposed this tree's secret for all to see and, by the middle of the 1700s, it would have been abundantly clear that something extraordinary was growing on the banks of theYakoun. It was a creature that seemed more at home in a myth or a fairy tale: a spruce tree with golden needles.
--excerpt from The Golden Spruce

About the Author:
John Vaillant has written for The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, and Men’s Journal, among others. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Golden Spruce is his first book.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
  • Publication date2005
  • ISBN 10 0393058875
  • ISBN 13 9780393058871
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages272
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780393328646: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780393328646
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006
Softcover

  • 9780099515791: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed

    Arrow ..., 2007
    Softcover

  • 9780676976465: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed

    Vintage, 2006
    Softcover

  • 9780676976458: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed

    Random..., 2005
    Hardcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 26.31
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
LibraryMercantile
(Humble, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # newMercantile_0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 27.73
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 29.55
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.50
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 29.67
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.30
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 31.60
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.25
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Hafa Adai Books
(Moncks Corner, SC, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # Hafa_fresh_0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 47.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.95
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W. W. Norton & Company (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 1.3. Seller Inventory # Q-0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 66.23
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 5.09
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Vaillant, John
Published by W W N (2005)
ISBN 10: 0393058875 ISBN 13: 9780393058871
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Pieuler Store
(Suffolk, United Kingdom)

Book Description Condition: new. Book is in NEW condition. Satisfaction Guaranteed! Fast Customer Service!!. Seller Inventory # PSN0393058875

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 84.61
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 31.53
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds