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  • The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing by Ken Roberts
  • James Benes
The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing.
By Ken Roberts. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2018. ix + 246 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $27.95 cloth.

In The Cedar Choppers, Ken Roberts details the curious lives of Texans who cut and sold cedar trees in the early twentieth century. He has a personal connection to the cedar choppers, whom he encountered as a child. Their story happens during a time of increased tensions surrounding the urban-rural divide between Austin and the maligned poorer communities along the Balcones Fault, immediately to the west. Using historical records and interviews, Roberts describes the cedar choppers’ origins in the area, their social and geographical milieu, their reception by the locals, and their demise due to technological advancements. Overall, the reader appreciates the cedar choppers’ obscure history, and how their main product—chopped cedar posts—helped to fence the American West.

Roberts’s detailed work includes rich accounts of families and place names. While Roberts does include two different maps, the book lacks a cohesion that additional maps describing the places mentioned in the book (namely, the Balcones Fault) would provide. The fault is central to the story and an important geographic marker for physical and conceptual topics, and yet it is missing from any map within the book. Additionally, the two maps in the book lack proper keys, or explanation of basic cartographic elements. The book does include an extensive family tree that is helpful when trying to piece together the many family lineages.

Intentionally or not, Roberts draws a familiar parallel between this bygone area and contemporary society with respect to [End Page 318] major technological trends. Similar to the cedar choppers’ plight, modern class struggles emerge between the haves and have-nots of the poorer rural communities and the wealthier urban communities, and age-old generational disputes arise between those who have every reason why the “other” is at odds with their way of life. Contemporary society is on the cusp of several technological transformations, as were the people described in this book. According to Roberts, the cedar choppers were ultimately pushed out by technological advancement—the chainsaw—and drought. And the reader can’t help but notice those two pressures in the world today, with both global temperatures and workplace automation on the rise. Thus, the story of the cedar choppers’ demise offers sobering insight into the political and social conflicts of today.

This book is for anyone who enjoys learning more about a hidden but fascinating story of human migration, and the power of a relatively small group to have a large impact on a region.

James Benes
College of Education and Human Sciences
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
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