Synopses & Reviews
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 land to the modern efforts to sell the wilderness as a consumer good, packaged in national parks and Alaskan cruises, Steinberg reminds readers that many critical episodes in our history were, in fact, environmental events: the California Gold Rush, for example, or the great migration of African Americans to the North in the early twentieth century (in part the consequence of an insect infestation). Equally important, Steinberg highlights the ways in which we have envisioned nature, attempting to reshape and control it--from Thomas Jefferson's surveying plan that divided the national landscape into a grid, to the transformation of animals, crops, and even water into commodities (New Englanders started trading water rights by the early nineteenth century). From the Pilgrims to Disney World, Steinberg's narrative abounds with fascinating details and often disturbing insights into our interaction with the natural world.
Few books truly change the way we see the past. Down to Earth is one of them: a vivid narrative that reveals the environment to be a powerful force in our history--a force that must be examined if we are truly to understand ourselves.
Review
"Ted Steinberg's book is a delight. [H]e shows how nature and natural events were influential in ways too often overlooked: for example, the role of climate in shaping the events and outcomes of the Civil War.... A coherent and well written overview of an extremely complex subject."-- Stephanie Pincetl, Department of Geography, University of Southern California, The American Historical Review
"With this book, Ted Steinberg boldly places the environment at the center of an important new synthesis of American history.... Down to Earth elegantly synthesizes the most recent work in the field and presents the author's own interpretations."--Linda Nash, Department of History, University of Washington, The Journal of American History
"Steinberg produces one of the best environmental histories ever written, a naturalist's version of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Like Richard White and William Cronon, who worked this ground before him, he insists that our interaction with the land is a complex give-and-take that still leaves room for surprises."--Bruce Barcott, Outside Magazine
"A challenging new look at American history describing how the environment has played a key role in every aspect of American development.... Richly researched and filled with fascinating details, this book takes an important new look at history and may cause readers to pause and consider the consequences of their lifestyle."--Library Journal
"The most exciting and fundamentally new view of the national past in a generation. American history, in every sense, has never looked greener."--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz, The Ecology of Fear, and Late Victorian Holocausts
"Steinberg chronicles the ecological effects of the clear-cutting of forests, the great push west, the building dams and railroads, and the rise of the cattle and car industries, heady endeavors that have diminished biodiversity and created vast quantities of hazardous waste and garbage. A socially conscious sibling to Tim Flannery's Eternal Frontier, Steinberg's scintillating environmental panorama reveals the ripple effect of every choice we make, from creating nuclear weapons to eating fast food, driving SUVs, and maintaining perfect lawns."--Booklist
"In this pioneering work, Ted Steinberg offers a bold new critical synthesis of American environmental history, the most ambitious that any scholar has attempted since the founding of the field more than a quarter century ago. By demonstrating the myriad but too often unackowledged ways in which familiar historical events have been intimately tied to the transformation and exploitation of the natural world, Down to Earth changes the way we think not just about our past, but our future as well."--William Cronon
"Steinberg is a refreshing historian because he writes from an environmental perspective. And he's a refreshing environmentalist because he's not hysterical."--Toronto Globe and Mail
"Steinberg's accessible survey will prove useful as a reference for green-inclined readers in and out of school."--Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
From the Pilgrims to Disney World, Steinberg offers a bold and exciting new way to understand American history through the lens of nature. 65 halftones. 5 maps.
Synopsis
In this ambitious and provocative text, environmental historian Ted Steinberg offers a sweeping history of our nation--a history that, for the first time, places the environment at the very center of our story. Written with exceptional clarity, Down to Earth re-envisions 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 modern-day 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, the author reminds readers that many critical episodes in our history were, in fact, environmental events. He highlights the ways in which we 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. The text is ideal for courses in environmental history, environmental studies, urban studies, economic history, and American history.
Passionately argued and thought-provoking, Down to Earth retells our nation's history with nature in the foreground--a perspective that will challenge our view of everything from Jamestown to Disney World.
About the Author
Ted Steinberg is Professor of History and Law at Case Western Reserve University. One of the most brilliant, articulate, and provocative of the rising generation of environmental historians, he is the author of
Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, Slide Mountain, or the Folly of Owning Nature, and
Nature Incorporated. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Rocks and History
Part 1: Chaos to Simplicity
1. Wilderness Under Fire
2. A Truly New World
3. Reflections from a Woodlot
Part 2: Rationalization and Its Discontents
4. A World of Commodities
5. King Climate in Dixie
6. The Great Food Fight
7. Extracting the New South
8. The Unforgiving West
9. Conservation Reconsidered
10. Death of the Organic City
Part 3: Consuming Nature
11. Moveable Feast
12. The Secret History of Meat
13. America in Black and Green
14. Throwaway Society
15. Shades of Green
16. Planet U.S.A.
Conclusion: Disney Takes on the Animal Kingdom