William Boyd provides a detailed overview of the regeneration and reindustrialization of the southern United States forest in relation to the pulp and paper industry. Intensive industrial logging of old-growth timber within the yellow pine belt started in the 1870s. Half a century later, the southern forest was decimated to a point where it could no longer cover resources needed for regional consumption. Boyd's book argues that within this period of timber famine, a private and institutional reorganization started which, guided by the pulp and paper industry, transformed the abandoned wasteland left behind by the logging firms into a highly efficient industrial forest. The transformation of the forest conditioned in return important social, political and ecological changes. The book investigates those changes in relation to the industrial revitalization of the forest and the rise of the pulp and paper industry in the American South.

The first chapter looks at how the destroyed old forest of the South was first surveyed in order to change not only the former mismanagement of the forest but also the common mind-set towards it, aiming to treat the trees like crops. The McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act commissioned the first forest survey in 1928. The survey found that not only was timber drain exceeding timber growth in most areas, but also frequent fires further threatened existing stand. Yearly taxation for decades of harvesting kept small landowners, who held the majority of the forested land, from investing in sufficient reforestation. Yet the survey also found that the regenerative potential of the forest was high and so kindled the interest of the pulp and paper industry. As a reaction, reforms of the New Deal followed by agricultural politics in the 1940s set into motion a number of awareness programs, combined with tax and credit reforms, which aimed to foster reforestation. This included changing the way in which wood as a resource was perceived: trees came to be understood as an industrial crop.

The second chapter of the book looks at wood procurement with a focus on the situation of local wood dealers. The first paper mills depended on local timber markets, but soon they started to accumulate land around them as hedges against price pressure. Southern pine not only regrew relatively fast; it also deteriorated quickly after being cut down. This meant that mills could only stock wood for a few weeks. As a consequence, the wood prices on the local market fluctuated with each week, pressuring local wood dealers. Through lobbying and legal maneuvering, the pulp and paper industry further managed to minimize the cost of labor in the woods. Due to the influence of the industry, loggers were excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act from the 1940s to 1970s. While this caused distress in the workforce in general, the group of black workers was hit hardest due to the racial labor hierarchy in the South. The third chapter examines how race as a factor was utilized by the pulp and paper industry to create an effective and cheap workforce. Race was the foundation for social hierarchy and was seen as a warrantor for stability and order in the mill labor force. Within this system, vertical rising was exclusively for white workers. Black workers formed the bottom of the workforce and were the first to lose their jobs after the Second World War when technical improvements replaced them. The civil rights movement in the 1960s slowly brought changes, opening career paths which were formerly blocked.

The last chapter of the book portrays environmental changes in relation to the pulp and paper industry. With the rise of the industry, the former forest landscape was converted into an organic machine, providing a crop. The new industrial forest was a monoculture lacking the diversity of a natural forest. Shortage of diversity threatened animal species to some extent and pollution from the paper industry further affected water as well as soil. By the 1950s, the industry became the largest polluter in the South and its economic value shielded it from injunctive relicts. This status prevailed very much until the 1970s when federal environmental laws finally forced the industry to adopt pollution standards. Similar to the other chapters, the narrative in this chapter follows a variety of juridical processes. The book in this way provides a very good analysis of the interconnectedness of the social and political layers in relation to the reindustrialization of the American South.