Sepia image of huge cut logs piled high with two men standing in front. Green title upper centered, black author name placed at bottom. Sepia image of huge cut logs piled high with two men standing in front. Green title upper centered, black author name placed at bottom. Sepia image of huge cut logs piled high with two men standing in front. Green title upper centered, black author name placed at bottom.

Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 272
Illustrations: 31 b&w halftones

Southern History
 Outdoors & Nature
 paperback
 ebook
 hardcover
 Forthcoming
 Books
 South Carolina History & Culture
 Environmental Studies
 Open Access Ebook

Wood Basket of the World

Lumbering, Commerce, and Conservation in South Carolina's Forests

edited by Jessica I. Elfenbein and Mark Kinzer

Paperback
978-1-64336-618-0
Published: May 21 2026

$29.99

Hardcover
978-1-64336-647-0
 Published: May 21 2026

$74.99

Spiral Bound

 Published:

Ebook
978-1-64336-684-5
 Published: May 21 2026

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OA Ebook
978-1-64336-684-5
 Published: May 21 2026

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The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of University of South Carolina Libraries

Tracing South Carolina's hidden history of lumber, labor, and forest conservation across two centuries

South Carolina's forests have long shaped the state's economy, landscapes, and labor practices, but their history has remained surprisingly understudied. Wood Basket of the World brings together essays that explore how lumbering, wood-product manufacturing, and forest conservation transformed the state's sandhills and coastal plain from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Featuring contributions from both emerging and established scholars, the essays in the volume examine how South Carolina became central to the global timber economy while also serving as a testing ground for labor organizing, environmental reform, and conservation movements.

Engaging environmental, economic, and social history, this collection offers new insight into the industries, people, and policies that have shaped South Carolina's wooded landscapes—and the national conversations they continue to inform.



Jessica I. Elfenbein is professor of history at the University of South Carolina and an award-winning public historian. She is the principal investigator for the ongoing multifaceted "Wood Basket of the World" project.

Mark Kinzer recently retired from the National Park Service where he was awarded the Excellence in Wilderness Stewardship Award. Trained as a lawyer, he is the author of Nature's Return.

"These incisive essays reveal the human histories etched into South Carolina's forests, landscapes shaped by labor, race, capitalism, and care. Essential reading for understanding the modern South."—Erin Stewart Mauldin, John Hope Franklin Chair of Southern History, University of South Florida, Co-Editor of Environmental History and the American South book series