Down to earth
Subtitle: nature's role in American history
By: Ted Steinberg, Case Western Reserve University
Edition: Fourth edition.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 346
ISBN-13: 9780190864422
Copyright date: 2019
Subjects: Environmental conditions; Human beings; Effect of environment of; Philosophy of nature; Human ecology; History
Description: In this ambitious and provocative text, environmental historian Ted Steinberg offers a sweeping history of the United States--a history that places the environment at the very center of the narrative. Now in a new edition, Down to Earth reenvisions the story of America "from the ground up." It reveals how focusing on plants, animals, climate, and other ecological factors can radically change the way that we think about the past. Examining such familiar topics as colonization, the industrial revolution, slavery, the Civil War, and the emergence of consumer culture, Steinberg recounts how the natural world influenced the course of human history. From the colonists' attempts to impose order on the land to modern efforts to sell the wilderness as a consumer good, he reminds readers that many critical episodes in U.S. history were, in fact, environmental events. The text highlights the ways in which Americans have attempted to reshape and control nature, from Thomas Jefferson's surveying plan, which divided the national landscape into a grid, to the transformation of animals, crops, and even water into commodities. --
Notes: Previous edition: 2013.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments; title: Preface; title: PROLOGUE: Rocks and history; title: PART 1. Alienation in the land; title: 1. Wilderness under fire; title: 2. A truly new world; title: 3. Unfettered accumulation; title: PART 2. Rationalization and its discontents; title: 4. A world of commodities; title: 5. King climate in Dixie; title: 6. The great food fight; title: 7. Extracting the new South; title: 8. The unforgiving West; title: 9. Conservation reconsidered; title: 10. Death of the organic city; title: PART 3. Consuming nature; title: 11. Moveable feast; title: 12. The secret history of meat; title: 13. America in black and green; title: 14. Throwaway society; title: 15. Shades of green; title: 16. Capitalism vs. the earth.