Agrotopias : an American literary history of sustainability In this book Abby L. Goode reveals the foundations of American environmentalism and its enduring connections to racism eugenics and agrarian ideals. Throughout the nineteenth century writers as diverse as Martin Delany Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Walt Whitman worried about unsustainable conditions such as population growth and plantation slavery. In response they imagined agrotopias sustainable societies unaffected by the nations agricultural and population crises elsewhere. Though seemingly progressive these agrotopian visions depicted selective breeding and racial improvement as the path to environmental stability. In this fascinating study Goode uncovers an early sustainability rhetoric interested in shaping just as much as sustaining the American population No rural bowl of milk: unsustainability and the demographic agrarian ideal Gothic fertility and other tropical nightmares: Jefferson Crèvecoeur Sansay African agrotopias: sustaining Black nationalism beyond U.S. borders Sustainable sprawl: Whitmans eugenic agrarianism Asexual sustainability in Herland Agrotopian legacies.