Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests, 2003.

• Author: Mahajan, Romi
• Position: Book Review

Derrick Jensen and George Draffan, Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests, 2003. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. 185 pages.

A thin volume, Strangely Like War, is a devastating tale of deforestation, an indictment of the global extractive capitalist system and of cynical players who have literally traded our future for a pile of cash. Meticulously researched and poetically written, Jensen and Draffan's book is stunning in its ability to tie capitalism, colonialism, globalization, political Machiavellianism, history, science, and activism together in a gripping (and scary) way.

Jensen's language is mellifluous at times and brutal at others. Jensen and Draffan's deep knowledge of nature and ecology--coupled with a grasp of statistics, numbers, and the relevant scientific concepts--is impressive.

Page one sets the stage. The forests of the world are in bad shape. About three-quarters of the world's original forests have been cut, most of that in the past century. Much of what remains is in three nations: Russia, Canada, and Brazil. 95% of the original forests of the United States are gone.

The stark facts continue on page nine. As of 1997, Nigeria had lost 99% of its native forests. The same was true of Finland and India. China, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Taiwan, Sweden, Bangladesh, the Central African Republic, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Burma, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Cameroon, and Cambodia had all lost at least 90%. Since 1997, of course, things have gotten much worse.

What each of us needs to consider is not so much whether we have hope that either the ecological crisis has been exaggerated or that some new...