The Slain Wood

"A terrific, strikingly original piece of scholarship, The Slain Wood offers readers a sophisticated and empirically rich account of the creation and evolution of the Southern pulp and paper industry. William Boyd's fine prose deftly blends agricultural, environmental, and industrial history with engrossing comparisons and connections."

"This excellent book contributes most robustly to economic and environmental history, but it will be read profitably by scholars interested in political change, regulatory regimes, and race and labor...[an] insightful analysis of the paper industry's important role in the twentieth-century South. The trees slain for this book sacrificed their well-engineered lives for a good cause."

"Boyd provides a comprehensive and scholarly analysis of a vital industry in an era of substantive regional change."

"... Tremendous value as a legal history situated within broader political, historical, economic, and social context."

"Slain Wood is an important contribution to promoting understanding of the transformations borne by the Southern regional landscape in the twentieth century. The work is carefully researched and critically related, with a distinctive emphasis on the legal framework guiding transformation of Southern papermaking."

"William Boyd bring such analysis to the American South in a significant contribution to both southern and environmental history... this book is a welcome cross-disciplinary bridge between economic, legal, and environmental history that successfully explains the fundamental historical importance of this understudied industry"

"This is a magisterial study of a relatively poorly understood world. To tell it well, Boyd takes seriously the many historiographical layers of the story, using business, technological, labor, legal, and environmental history approaches. The synthesis of these overlapping tales is a huge achievement and his beautiful writing make the book a powerful read. It could well stand as a model for future industrial-environmental historians."

"Overall, Boyd illustrates the double-edged sword that is economic development; its jobs and prosperity often inflict a devastating impact on the non-human and human environments. Boyd makes plain that "the smell of prosperity" is an odor whose costs should be weighed more carefully than Governor Wallace’s glib analysis suggests."

"... book beautifully written, richly textured, and tightly argued..."

"The Slain Wood is a remarkable contribution to southern economic and environmental history"

"... well-reserched history of industry and region."

"Das interessant geschriebene Buch kann in vielen Aspekten als exemplarische Betrachtung der historischen Entwicklung einiger Industriezweige aufgefasst werden, besonders auch der Zellstoff- und Papier - industrie in Europa."