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Loading... Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American Historyby Ted Steinberg
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. One of a small group of environmental historians, the author provides fascinating details and insights into U.S. History through the viewpoint of environmental episodes. Learn how natural conditions and mankind's impact have interacted and affected American life. Learn more from a review by E. Voves, "Informing the Debate" http://www.januarymagazine.com/artcult/downtoearth.html in January Magazine. (lj) ( ) no reviews | add a review
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. -- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)333.7Social sciences Economics Economics of land & energy Land, recreational and wilderness areas, energyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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