John Perlin, author of an epic 1989 history of civilization’s use and abuse of trees, thanks his “angels from Ventura,” Patagonia Books, for the book’s timely reissue.

Don Perlin, a veteran comic book artist who, after decades in the industry, helped create the popular but nontraditional superheroes Moon Knight and Bloodshot, died on May 14 in Jacksonville, Fla.

While Perlin went into semi-retirement by the mid-1990s, he occasionally contributed stories to DC and Valiant. Our thoughts are with Perlin’s family, friends, and fans at this time.

Perlin, now in the foothills of his early seventies, is not your run-of-the-mill big-brain autodidact. Back in the early 1980s, Perlin synthesized and distilled 5,000 years of human history into one ...