When astonished Europeans first spotted the vast pine forests of North America – forests teeming with trees twice as tall as even the tallest pine trees in England – the economic and military potential was immediately evident. In that preindustrial age, the lumber and pitch that could be harvested from those forests represented resources worth fighting for. The forests of North America would play an important part in the development of the emerging United States and in the ensuing centuries. In White Pine, Andrew Vietze turns his attention to the part that these evergreens played in peace, war, the building of cities, and forming laws.
Bestselling Maine author Andrew Vietze has been called "an excellent New England historian" by the Kennebec Journal and has won several awards for his history writing. The former Managing Editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, he's the author of six books, including Boon Island and Becoming Teddy Roosevelt, both of which were regional bestsellers, won Independent Publisher Book Awards, and were finalists for Book of the Year Awards (ForeWord Reviews).
As a journalist, Vietze has won awards for history writing from the International Regional Magazine Association. His work has appeared in a wide array of print and online publications, including: the New York Times' LifeWire, Time Out New York, Weather.com's "Forecast Earth," AMC Outdoors, Explore, Big Sky Journal, Crawdaddy!, Popmatters, Offshore, and the Maine Times, and he has twice won awards for history writing from the International Regional Magazine Association.
A Registered Maine Guide, Andrew Vietze had a tree fort in a tall old pine during his childhood and used to walk from one to the next in the forest canopy twenty feet above the ground. He spends half the year working as a seasonal ranger in Baxter State Park, stationed at an old sporting camp called Twin Pines.