With this book, discover how the peoples of America perceived and changed their environments and, in the process, re-made their politics, culture, and societies. 

The thoroughly revised and newly updated Second Edition of American Environmental History delivers a comprehensive exploration of how the peoples of the United States have perceived, and made changes to, the natural world around them. It also describes how nature has changed in response to humanity, from the pre-Columbian era to the present, and how Americans have fought with one another over how best to live in the earth’s natural systems.

Accomplished professor and author Louis Warren offers readers examinations of crucial topics, including Native American landscapes and relations with nature, virgin soil epidemics, colonial invasion, American slavery through environmental history and the nexus of race and environmental peril, market economies and the destruction of bison, passenger pigeons, whales,  and other creatures, industrial development and its hazards, urbanization and calls for pollution control, conservation in the Progressive Era, wilderness and national parks, the rise of environmentalism, the birth of the environmental justice movement, consumerism and its environmental impact, the conservative backlash against environmentalism, and  histories of ozone depletion, acid rain, overpopulation, and climate change.  This book invites readers to weigh the distinctive experiences of different people—white, Black, and Native American—to environmental change and environmental threats from the colonial period to COVID-19.  

You’ll benefit from an insightful editorial introduction to each chapter, as well as interpretive interventions that add scholarly value to each reading and document. The author includes selections from amongst the most exciting scholarship and seminal essays on the subject of environmental history in the United States. 

American Environmental History, 2nd Edition provides readers with: 

• Over twice as many primary documents as the First Edition 
• Perspective on a time period spanning from the pre-Columbian era to the present day 
• The incorporation of insights from several fields, including Native American history, African American history, environmental justice, and geography 
• A chapter dedicated to the environmental history of American slavery 
• Clarifying insights into the creation and impact of the New Deal on the American environment 
• Guidance for students on thinking about climate change in historical perspective 

Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students studying American Environmental History, the book is also ideal for anyone with even a passing interest in American natural history and the impact of her peoples on the natural world around them. 

Louis S. Warren is the W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History at the University of California, Davis. He is a two-time winner of the Caughey Western History Association Prize, a Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Albert Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association and the Bancroft Prize in American History.

Series Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: What is Environmental History?

1 The Nature of Indian America Before Columbus

Article: William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492” (Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3) 1992:  369-385)

Documents

Richard Nelson, “The Watchful World” (from Richard Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (University of Chicago, 1983): 14 – 32.

From Gilbert Wilson, Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987)

Images of Florida Indians planting and making an offering of a stag to the sun (Images and text extracts from Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Vols. I and II).

U.S. Geological Survey, map of Bitterroot Forest Reserve showing burned areas, 1890.

2 The Other Invaders: Deadly Diseases and Extraordinary Animals

Article: Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics” (excerpted from Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 – 1900 (Cambridge, 1987))

Documents

Frank Givens, “Saynday and Smallpox: The White Man’s Gift”

From Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans

John C. Ewers, “Horse Breeding”

George Catlin, “Wild Horses at Play”

3 Colonial Natures: Marketing the Countryside

Article: William Cronon, “A World of Fields and Fences” excerpt from Changes in the Land:  Indians Colonists and the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang, 1983)

Documents

Robert Cushman, “Reasons and Considerations Touching the Lawfulness of Removing out of England into the Parts of America” (1622)

Lion Gardener, “Livestock and War in Colonial New England”

Spanish priests Joseph Murguia and Thomas de la Pena explain Indian frustration with settler livestock in colonial California

4 Slavery and the South Through Environmental History

Article: Mart Stewart, “Towards an Environmental History of the U.S. South”

Documents

newspaper advertisements for African slaves “from ‘The Rice Coast’ of West Africa, with knowledge of rice growing”

Wilderness songs of enslaved people, William Francis Allen, Slave Songs of the United States (1867)

Frederick Law Olmsted, “The Rice District”

5 Frontier Expansion and Waste

Article: Alan Taylor, “Wasty Ways”: Stories of American Settlement” (from Environmental History 3(3) July 1998: 291 – 309 (excerpted)).

Documents

James Fenimore Cooper on “The Wasty Ways of Pioneers”

John J. Audubon and the Wonder of the Passenger Pigeon, 1830s

Reporting on Passenger Pigeons (1850)

Frederick J. Haskin, “One Bird Survives Millions” (1913)

Edwin Bryant, What I Saw in California

Thomas Cole, Excerpt from “Essay on American Scenery” (1836)

6 Environmental Reform In City and Factory

Article: Charles E. Rosenberg, From The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (“Introduction,” and “The Epidemic,” from The Cholera Years (1962, rev. ed. 1987), 1-7, 13 – 39, excerpted)

Documents

“The Metropolitan Board of Health Suppresses Nuisances” (1866)

“Underground Life—Health Officers Clean Out a Dive” (1873)

San Francisco fire, 1850s

Los Angeles crowd with water flowing into aqueduct

Dynamited LA aqueduct, 1927.

Alice Hamilton describes the industrial workplace of the early 1900s (1943)

7 Emerging Markets and Vanishing Animals

Article: Dan Flores, “Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy Redux: Another Look at the Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850” (from Dan Flores, The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (University of Oklahoma, 2001)).

Documents

Billy Dixon, “Memories of buffalo hunting” (1870s)

Harper’s Weekly, “Curing Hides and Bones” (1874)

Drake Hotel, Thanksgiving Menu, 1886

Baleen Demand and the Destruction of Whales (1907)

Advertisement for Thomson’s Glove-Fitting Corset (1874)

“Destruction of Birds for Millinery Purposes,” (1886)

“Cruelties of Fashion-Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds” (1883)

8 The Many Uses of Progressive Conservation

Article: Benjamin Heber Johnson, “Conservation, Subsistence, and Class at the Birth of Superior National Forest” (Environmental History 4(1) January 1999, 80 – 99).

Documents

Gifford Pinchot, “The Meaning of Conservation”

“Mr. A. A. Anderson, Special Supervisor of the Yellowstone and Teton Timber Reserves, Talks Interestingly of the Summer’s Work”

Women Activists Take on Bird Hat Fashion 

--Celia Thaxter, “Woman’s Heartlessness” (1887)

Charles Askins Describes Game and Hunting Conditions in the South

Ben Senowin testifies about being apprehended for game law violations

9 National Parks and the Trouble With Wilderness

Article: William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness, or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” (from William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground (Norton, 1995). 

Documents

John Muir on Saving Hetch Hetchy

Peter Oscar Little Chief requests permission to hunt in Glacier Park

National Parks Act, 1916; Wilderness Act, 1964

10 Conservation and the New Deal

Article: Neil Maher, “A New Deal Body Politic: Landscape, Labor, and the Civilian Conservation Corps,” Environmental History, 7, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 435-461 (excerpt)

Documents

Ann Marie Low, Farmer’s Daughter, Describes the New Deal 

Excerpt from Russell Moore, Roosevelt Riddles (1936)

Photo Gallery--Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein Capture the Dust Bowl

Eli Gorman and Deneh Bitsilly Remember New Deal Livestock Reduction in Navajo Country (1974)

11 Something In the Wind: Radiation, Pesticides, and Air Pollution

Article: Robert Gottlieb, “Reconstructing Environmentalism: Complex Movements, Diverse Roots” (Environmental History 17(4) Winter, 1993: 1-19 (excerpted).

Documents

“Fallout: The Silent Killer” (1959)

From Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)

Monsanto Corporation, excerpt from “The Desolate Year” (1962)

The Hugh Moore Fund, “The Population Bomb” (1954)

The Air Pollution Control Act (1955)

The Clean Air Act, with amendments (2001)

United Farm Workers, “Pesticides:  The Poisons We Eat” (1969)

12 Environmental Protection and the Environmental Movement

Article: J. Brooks Flippen, “Richard Nixon and the Triumph of Environmentalism” (excerpted from Flippen, Nixon and the Environment (New Mexico, 2000):  1- 16, 46-49, 83-87, 98, 233-6, 243-4, 250, 254-5).

Documents

National Environmental Policy Act (1969)

The Endangered Species Act (1973)

From Daniel Yankelovich, “The New Naturalism” (1972)

Gaylord Nelson Newsletter, “Earth Day” (1970)

Black Environmentalists See “Another Side of Pollution” (1970)

From Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1969)

13 Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice

Article: Eileen Maura McGurty, “From NIMBY to Civil Rights: The Origins of the Environmental Justice Movement” (excerpted from Environmental History 2(3) July, 1997: 301-323.

Documents

Lois Gibbs on toxic waste and environmental justice(1992)

From United Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (1987)

The Letter that Shook a Movement (1993)

Flint Water Advisory Task Force, “Final Report” (Excerpt) (2016)

14 Global Consumers and Global Environments

Article: Matt Klingle, “Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History,” History and Theory, 42(4) Dec. 2003, 94 – 110 (excerpt)

Documents

A Botanist’s Report on Bananas in Honduras (1931)

The Impact of Coffee Farming on Indigenous Peoples (2005)

State of Denial—California’s Appetite for World Resources (2003)

15 Back-Lash Against the Environmental Movement

Article: James Morton Turner, “The Specter of Environmentalism: Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right,” Journal of American History 96 (1) June, 2009: 123 - 149

Documents

Map of U.S. Federal Lands (2020)

Tim Peckinpaugh, “Special Report-The Specter of Environmentalism: The Threat of Environmental Groups” (1982)  

Joe Lane (National Cattlemen’s Association) and Larry Echohawk (Shoshone and Bannock Tribes of Idaho), testify about the Sagebrush Rebellion (1980)

Carl Pope, “The Politics of Plunder”

S. Fred Singer, “The Costs of Environmental Overregulation”

Mark Douglas Whitaker, “’Jobs vs. Environment’ Myth”

16 Shifting Scale: Climate Change and Global Peril 

Article: Mike Hulme, “Reducing the Future to Climate:  A Story of Climate Determinism and Reductionism” (excerpt, from Osiris 2011 26:245-266)

Documents

Ben J. Wattenberg, “The Population Explosion is Over” (1996)

“World Population is Expected to Nearly Stop Growing by the End of the Century”

From United Nations, “World Population Prospects” (2019)

Graph of Economic Growth and Air Emission Trends, 1970 – 2018

Graph of Atmospheric CO₂ Concentration, 1958-2020

Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, 800,000 BP-present

The Acid Rain Experience, 1990-2002

Atmospheric CFC Concentration, 1977-2019

Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index, 2020 (NASA)

Index