American Environmental History

by Warren, Louis S.

• ISBN13: 9780631228639
• ISBN10: 0631228632
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-04
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Louis S. Warren is Associate Professor of History and W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western US History at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America (1999).

Table of Contents

Series Editor's

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: What Is Environmental History?

The Natures of Indian America before Columbus

Article: The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of The Americas in 1492

Documents.'The Watchful World'

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden (1917)

Images of Florida Indians Planting and Making an Offering of a Stag to the Sun

The Other Invaders: Deadly Diseases And Extraordinary Animals

Article: On Virgin Soil Epidemics

Documents.'Saynday And Smallpox: The White Man's Gift' (1968)

Three Years among The Indians And Mexicans (1822)

'Horse Breeding' (1955)

'Wild Horses At Play'

Colonial Natures: Marketing The Countryside

Article: A World of Fields and Fences

Documents.'Reasons and Considerations Touching the Lawfulness of Removing Out of England into the Parts of America' (1622)

'Livestock and War in Colonial New England'

Explain Indian Frustration with Settler Livestock In Colonial California (1782)

Forest and Plantation in Nineteenth-Century America

Clearing The Forest

Article: 'Wasty Ways': Stories of American Settlement

Documents.Wasty Ways of Pioneers (1823)

What I Saw In California (1846)

Nature and Slavery

Article: Rice, Water, and Power: Landscapes of Domination and Resistance in the Lowcountry, 1790-1880

Documents.Map of Doboy and Altamaha Sounds (1856). The Rice District' (1856)

Urban Nature And Urban Reforms

Article: The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866Charles E. Rosenberg

Documents.San Francisco Fire (1850s)

Crowd with empty aqueduct (1913)

Dynamited Portion of LA Aqueduct (1927)

Markets, and the Disappearing Bison

Article: Bison Ecology And Bison Diplomacy Redux: Another Look at the Southern Plains from 1800 to 185

Documents.'Memories of buffalo hunting'

'Curing Hides and Bones' (1974).Thanksgiving Menu (1883)

The Many Uses Of Conservation

Article: Conservation, Subsistence, and Class at the Birth of Superior National Forest

Documents.'The Meaning of Conservation' (1909)

Special Supervisor of the Yellowstone and Teton Timber Reserves, Talks Interestingly of the Summer's Work' (1902)

Describes Game and Hunting Conditions in the South

Testifies about Being Apprehended for Game Law Violations

National Parks And The Trouble With Wilderness

Article: The Trouble with Wilderness or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

Documents.On Saving Hetch Hetchy (1909)

Little Chief Requests Permission to Hunt in Glacier Park, 1932

National Parks Act, 1916 Wilderness Act, 1964

Something In The Wind: Radiation, Pesticides, And Air Pollution

Article: Reconstructing Environmentalism: Complex Movements, Diverse Roots

Documents.'Fallout: The Silent Killer' (1959).'Elixirs Of Death' (1962)

The Clean Air Act (1955, 2001)

Environmental Protection And The Environmental Movement

Article: Richard Nixon and the Triumph of Environmentalism

Documents.National Environmental Policy Act (1969)

The Endangered Species Act (1973)

The Population Bomb (1970)

Environmental Racism And Environmental Justice

Article: Troubled Waters in Ecotopia: Environmental Racism in Portland, Oregon

Documents:Lois Gibbs on Toxic Waste and Environmental Justice (1993)

From United Church of Christ Toxic Wastes and ''Race In The United States (1987). The Letter That Shook a Movement''

Backlash against the Environmental Movement

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