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A celebration of urban trees and the Americans - presidents, plant explorers, visionaries, citizen activists, scientists, nurserymen, and tree nerds - whose arboreal passions have shaped and ornamented the nation's cities, from Jefferson's day to the present Nature's largest and longest-lived creations, trees play an extraordinarily important role in our cityscapes, living landmarks that define space, cool the air, soothe our psyches, and connect us to nature and our past. Today, four fifths of Americans live in or near cities, surrounded by millions of trees, urban forests containing hundreds of species. Despite the ubiquity and familiarity of those trees, most of us take them for granted and know little of their specific natural history or civic virtues.