Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History
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Product Description
In this ambitious and provocative text, environmental historian Ted Steinberg offers a sweeping history of the United States–a history that, for the first time, places the environment at the very center of the narrative. Now in a new edition, Down to Planet reenvisions the tale of America “from the ground up.” It reveals how focusing on plants, animals, climate, and additional ecological factors can radically change the way that we reflect about the past. Examining such familiar topics as colonization, the manufacturing 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 excellent, 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 scenery, from Thomas Jefferson’s surveying plot, which divided the national landscape into a grid, to the transformation of animals, crops, and even water into commodities.
In the second edition, Steinberg has painstakingly revised and updated the section on the twentieth century. He also introduces a timely new theme–the rise of the corporation. By addressing the ways in which scenery functions in the world of huge business, as well as the efforts by environmentalists to combat corporate power, Steinberg provides a richer understanding of consumerism.
Down to Planet is ideal for courses in environmental history, environmental studies, urban studies, economic history, and American history. Passionately argued and thought provoking, this powerful text retells our nation’s history with scenery in the foreground–a perspective that will challenge our view of everything from Jamestown to McDonald’s.Amazon.com Review
“This book will try to change the way you reflect about American history,” writes Ted Steinberg in the opening line of Down to Planet. That’s an ambitious aver, but not far off the mark. His fascinating book is essentially an environmental history of the United States, with the leader paying particular attention to how fundamentals of scenery became commodities and thereby isolated Americans from the natural world. Readers don’t have to subscribe to this neo-Marxist concept in order to appreciate Steinberg’s observations about everything from the ancient-time urban problem of horse excrement (“the nineteenth-century equivalent of auto pollution”) to the massive amounts of garbage produced by quick-food chains (McDonald’s, he says, requires “an area equivalent in size to more than 450,000 football fields” to supply its paper needs). He also tells what may be the first-ever natural history of the Civil War. This may sound idiosyncratic, and to some extent it is, yet Steinberg weaves it all together and makes the underappreciated point that “it is reasonably simply incorrect to view the natural world as an unchanging backdrop to the past.” It changes all the time, he writes, and it has shaped Americans in ways that few of them know. –John Miller
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Perfect garbage – should be place into the incinerator right next to Algore’s Planet First. Has Mr. Steinberg never been to Mexico to see the environmental controls on industry (there aren’t any)or thier past or current methods of waste disposal? The US is clearly the cleanest and most regulated of all developed countries, maybe Mr. Steinberg should focus his efforts elsewhere. This book is not worth the money in my estimation – just the same ancient environmental rantings.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Completely Arresting!–A brilliant reinterpretation of the American past. Does for environmental history what Howard Zinn did a generation ago for social history.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
DOWN TO EARTH: NATURE’S ROLE IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Ted Steinberg is an appealing book, particularly the first half which is a well-researched environmentally based history of the United States. The tenor of the book in these early chapters was very objective and gave a holistic sense of the many factors (natural, political and otherwise) that led to the development of our nation.
I must admit but that I was disappointed with the last few chapters of the book as it quickly declined (in my opinion) into a stereotypical environmentalist diatribe on the evils of American capitalism. The meat-packing, automotive (read “SUV’s”), and biotechnology industries (along with the United States as a global dominant) are the waxed-mustachioed villains in the global environmental drama and, if only we would return to some pristine form of being, then all would be OK. We have a responsibility of stewardship toward the planet’s resources, but, global ecology and human health, safety AND PROSPERITY are not mutually exclusive items. Economic development within an integrative ecological context can be very profitable indeed, but it requires a shift away from the regularly adversarial posturing and categorization of positions into the camps of stereotypical tree-huggers as well as self-styled imperial despoilers. What is needed is a more balanced approach where humanity is recognizable as part of scenery, not as an alien component to be thwarted. Agreed the first part of the book, I had hoped that there would be new thoughts and approaches rather than predictable speechifying.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I had to read this book for my Enviornmental History class, and it was really appealing. I was far less interested in the additional book we had to read for the same class.
I had no distress reading the assigned chapters, and regularly kept reading past the assigned pages. Steinberg has an appealing ‘take’ on history. My favorite chapter was #10, Death of the Organic City, which was about the role of human “waste” in the cities in the ecology of outlier farming, and how the advent of piped sewage insured (unintentional) pollution of rivers & additional waterways. At the time, it was believed that running water cleaned up filth– which it would have, in smaller amounts.
I had never considered that the clean-up of human waste in the cities had a downside. As well, the role of pigs as waste recyclers was intriquing and illuminating, as well as being the mainstay of most poor families.
Steinbergers version of the Civil War was also very intriquing. According to Steinberg, the South would have won the war but for scenery’s vagaries.
My review is lame compared to the book, but I do highly recommend it.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
A painstakingly engaging review of American history from the forming of the continent to the current day– with an vital difference. Originally conceived to be a textbook, this is a wonderful presentation of the significant role our natural resources and additional environmental factors have played in the development of the U.S. I find Steinberg to be a skillful and diplomatic writer: he rightfully highlights the blessings and curses of the natural environment (and our obligation as stewards) lacking minimizing or displacing additional influences.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5