American environmental history
By: edited by Louis S. Warren.
Contributors: Warren, Louis S.
Series: Blackwell readers in American social and cultural history
Publisher: Blackwell Pub.; Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Malden, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 359
Subjects: Human ecology -- United States -- History; Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- United States; United States -- Environmental conditions -- History
Description: "This compilation of seminal essays introduces students to the most exciting scholarship and writing on the environmental history in the United States. With primary documents that illustrate the conditions, perception, and influences of environmental issues from the pre-Columbian era to the present, the book invites students to analyze not only the connections between people and nature, but popular ideas of the environment in American history. Subjects include the changing American landscape, virgin soil epidemics and biological invasions, the impact of colonialism and industrial development, conservation, and the environmental movement and the backlash against it." "An editorial introduction and headnotes for each chapter add scholarly value to the readings and documents. Students and instructors of American environmental history will find this an ideal collection for their courses and research."--BOOK JACKET
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Part 1. The natures of Indian America before Columbus. The pristine myth: the landscape of the Americas in 1492 / William M. Denevan.  Documents; title: Part 2. The other invaders: deadly diseases and extraordinary animals. Virgin soil epidemics / Alfred W. Crosby.  Documents; title: Part 3. Colonial natures: marketing the countryside. A world of fields and fences / William Cronon.  Documents; title: Part 4. Forest and plantation in nineteenth-century America.  "Wasty ways": stories of American settlement / Alan Taylor.  Documents ; Rice, water, and power: landscapes of domination and resistance in the lowcountry, 1790-1880 / Mart A. Stewart.  Documents; title: Part 5. Urban nature and urban reforms. From The cholera years: the United States in 1832, 1849, 1866 / Charles E. Rosenberg.  Documents; title: Part 6. Markets, nature, and the disappearing bison. Bison ecology and bison diplomacy redux: another look at the southern plains from 1800 to 1850 / Dan Flores.  Documents; title: Part 7. The many uses of conservation. Conservation, subsistence, and class at the birth of Superior National Forest / Benjamin Heber Johnson.  Documents; title: Part 8. National parks and the trouble with wilderness. The trouble with wilderness, or, getting back to the wrong nature / William Cronon.  Documents; title: Part 9. Something in the wind: radiation, pesticides, and air pollution. Reconstructing environmentalism: complex movements, diverse roots / Robert Gottlieb.  Documents; title: Part 10. Environmental protection and the environmental movement. Richard Nixon and the triumph of environmentalism / J. Brooks Flippen.  Documents; title: Part 11. Environmental racism and environmental justice. Troubled waters in Ecotopia: environmental racism in Portland, Oregon / Ellen Stroud.  Documents; title: Part 12. Backlash against the environmental movement.  Documents; title: Part 13. Legacies.  Documents.