Named an American Scientist Recommended ReadHistorical narratives often concentrate on wars and politics while omitting the central role and influence of the physical stage on which history is carried out. In Losing Eden award-winning historian Sara Dant debunks the myth of the American West as “Eden” and instead embraces a more realistic and complex understanding of a region that has been inhabited and altered by people for tens of thousands of years....

The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.In this pioneering study, White explores the relationship between the natural history of the Columbia River and the human history of the Pacific Northwest for both whites and Native Americans. He concentrates on what brings humans and the river together: not only the physical space of the region but also, and primarily, energy and work. For working with t...

A compelling book that explores the conflict between beavers and human development, urging us to rethink our approach to environmental management.In this intriguing little book, Glynnis Hood tells the remarkable story of beavers—nature’s architects and a keystone species that has survived ice ages, droughts, the fur trade, and urbanization. Known for creating and maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems, beavers are beloved by conservationists but often clash with ur...

How Native American history can guide us today: "Presents strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos." — Whole EarthWritten by a former Green Party vice-presidential candidate who was once listed among "America's fifty most promising leaders under forty" by Time magazine, this thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, ...

A tour de force of writing and analysis, Down to Earth offers a sweeping history of our nation, one that for the first time places the environment at the very center of our story. Writing with marvelous clarity, historian Ted Steinberg sweeps across the centuries, re-envisioning the story of America as he recounts how the environment has played a key role in virtually every social, economic, and political development. Ranging from the colonists' attempts to impose order on the lan...

"Through the voices of ordinary Native Americans . . . LaDuke is able to transform highly complex issues into stories that touch the heart." —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United StatesThe indigenous imperative to honor nature is undermined by federal laws approving resource extraction through mining and drilling. Formal protections exist for Native American religious expression—but not for the places and natural reso...

With its soaring azure sky and stark landscapes, the American Southwest is one of the most hauntingly beautiful regions on earth. Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe. In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulne...

For more than twenty years, Winona LaDuke has impressed people around the world with her oratory and debate skills and as an advocate for Native American rights, champion of women’s and children’s issues, protector of the environment, and as a leading voice of the Green Party. A charismatic and inspiring speaker and writer, LaDuke possesses a stirring passion that comes through in the 30 speeches, articles, and fiction excerpts compiled in The Winona LaDuke Reader. This is the first collec...

Over the past two decades, the question of who owns the land of Temagami and how the land should be used has caused a debate of unparalleled intensity.For the native people, it is their lands under attack. For environmentalists from all parts of Ontario, it is a case of ecological preservation of a unique but fast-disappearing wilderness. For others, dependent upon the resource sector, it is a matter of economic survival, both individually and for their communities.In an at...

This history chronicles the 19th century plan to reintroduce wild bison into Western Montana and the rise of Roosevelt's conservation movement.In the late 1800s, the rapid depletion of the American bison population prompted calls for the preservation of wildlife and wild lands in North America. Following a legendary hunt for the last wild bison in central Montana, Dr. William Hornady sought to immortalize the West's most iconic species. Activists like Theodore Roos...

By studying the many ways diverse peoples have changed, shaped, and conserved the natural world over time, environmental historians provide insight into humanity's unique relationship with nature and, more importantly, are better able to understand the origins of our current environmental crisis. Beginning with the precolonial land-use practice of Native Americans and concluding with our twenty-first century concerns over our global ecological crisis, American Environmental History

“An inspiring reminder of the incredible resource that is our public lands.” —Brendan Leonard, author of The Camping Life and Surviving the Great OutdoorsAcross 193 million acres of forests, mountains, deserts, watersheds, and grasslands, national forests provide a multitude of uses as diverse as America itself. They welcome 170 million visitors each year to hike, bike, paddle, ski, fish, and hunt. But “the people’s lands” offer more than just rec...