xvi, 301 pp. "So Glorious a Landscape: Nature and the Environment in American History and Culture surveys the vast and interdisciplinary subject of American natural and environmental studies. It examines the literary landscape that has inspired a local, regional, and national sense of place; explores the dynamic meaning and significance of nature across time, place, culture, and gender; and looks at the essence and history of environmental change. The first all-encompassing introductory survey of environmental history and cultural studies, this volume provides students and scholars with carefully chosen selections from major essayists, naturalists, preachers, geographers, novelists, scientists, and historians whose works have shaped the fields of literary ecology and environmental history. The essays trace the changing American landscape and ideas about nature from the seventeenth century to the present. By analyzing a range of material, So Glorious a Landscape provides a fresh perspective on what nature is in American life, what forces have shaped its profound place and changing definition, and what the work of environmental historians tells about the relationship of nature, culture, and power in America. So Glorious a Landscape is an excellent resource for courses in American studies, environmental history, and American culture." CONTENTS: Preface and Acknowledgments; INDIAN ECOLOGY, AMERICAN CONQUEST: Acoma Pueblo Creation Myth; Tewa Sky Looms; A Hideous and Desolate Wildnerness (1647) by William Bradford; Potential of the New English Canaan (1632) by Thomas Morton; Fate of the Abenaki in the Colonial Ecological Revolution by Carolyn Merchant; The Northwest Ordinance (1787); The Untransacted Destiny of the American People (1846) by William Gilpin; Americans Spread All Over California (1846) by Monterey Californian; Social and Environmental Degradation in the California Gold Country (1890) by Joaquin Miller; The Soreness of the Land (1925) by Wintu Indian Kate Luckie; NATURE'S NATION: THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE AND THE NATURE WRITING TRADITION: Where I Lived and What I Lived For (1854) by Henry David Thoreau; My First Summer in the Sierra (1868) by John Muir; Spring at the Capital (1871) by John Burroughs; The Land of Little Rain (1903) by Mary Austin; The Present at Tinker Creek (1974) by Annie Dillard; SCIENCE, NATURE, AND THE EMERGENCE OF AN ECOLOGICAL ETHIC: The Animal Creation and the Importance of Ephemera (1791) by William Bartram; The Destructiveness of Man (1864) by George Perkins Marsh; Human Ecology and the Habits of Sanitation in the Modern Urban Environment (1907) by Ellen Swallow Richards; Land-Use Ethics and Economic Self-Interest (1949) by Aldo Leopold; POWER AND PLACE: THE MEETING OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY: Alice Hamilton Explores the Dangerous Trades by Robert Gottlieb; Preserving the Hallowed Grounds of Dinosaur National Monument (1954) by David R. Brower; The Rape of the Appalachians (1962) by Harry M. Caudill; What Happened at Love Canal (1982) by Lois Gibbs; The Origins of the Environmental Justice Movement (1997) by Eileen Maura McGurty; THE ENVIRONMENTAL ERA: RESPONSES TO NATURE IN DISTRESS: Passenger Pigeons (1949) by Robinson Jeffers; The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis (1967) by Lynn White, Jr.; Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks (1968) by Edward Abbey; The Fate of All Living Things (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko; The National Environmental Policy Act (1969); Population and Global Economic Patterns (1990) by Lawrence W. Libby & Rodney L. Clouser; Wise Use: What Do We Believe' (1996) by Ron Arnold; Women and Ecology (1988) by Andree Collard & Joyce Contrucci; Suggestions for Further Reading.
