This report describes 52 taxa of North American softwoods, which are organized alphabetically by genus. Descriptions include scientific name, trade name, distribution, tree characteristics, wood characteristics (e.g., general, weight, mechanical properties, drying, shrinkage, working properties, durability, preservation, uses, and toxicity), and additional sources of information. Data were compiled from existing literature, mostly from research done at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin.

The new edition of this comprehensive study of national and international research and application into wood preservation is both well detailed and broad in coverage. The text covers the history of preservation: the anatomy of timbers and their breakdown, preservation principles, materials and methods.

The Chemical Technology of Wood is an eight-chapter introductory text on the developments in understanding the chemistry of wood and its chemical-technological utilization. The opening chapters of this book cover the productive aspects of forests, followed by a description of the anatomy and physical properties of wood. The subsequent chapter presents a summative wood analysis concerning its cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, and other extraneous components. This topic is followed by a presentation of several destructive processing of wood, including acid hydrolysis, pyrolysis, oxidation, and hydrogenolysis. The remaining chapters describe the pulp production through sulfite cooking and using alkaline reagents. This book will prove useful to chemists, engineers, biologists, foresters, and economists.