Catch The Wealth Of Nature: Environmental History And The Ecological Imagination Composed By Donald Worster Volume

seemed to have forgotten completely that, until very recently, almost all people lived as intimately with other species and with the wind and weather as they did with their own kind.
To ignore that long intimacy was to distort history, They had forgotten, or perhaps had never known, the natural things that mattered greatly to people of another era.


Environmental history ought to have a few ideas to offer the public, and those ideas ought to have a little conviction in them as well as reason and evidence.
The historian should let people know what he cares about and encourage them to care about it too, He should not hide all day in the archives or write only for a graduate seminar, but now and then try to take part in the great public issues that animate our times: the fate of rural communities, for example, the aspirations of developing countries, the future of the earth.
” Worster's essays make up the best kind of history of environmentalist thinking, He gives ecological ideas a hard, critical evaluation, compares them honestly with competing trends of thought, and reaches all kinds of prudent conclusions.
The book explores the cultural shifts in environmentalism over time, including their religious dimensions, Worster deals with the big ideas behind our culture wars, the failings of our past visions, and the dangers of emerging visions, which could derail ecology into a huge new bioengineering scheme for remaking nature to fit our consumer demand.
It's dense reading, but fascinating and challenging, Worster looks as far into the future as he does into the past, and thinks hard about what kinds of community, religion, common sense and economics can possibly achieve what's needed for a healthy planet.
Although it is a little dated at overyears, the ideas still hold true and Worster covers them well.
Hailed as "one of the most eminent environmental historians of the West" by Alan Brinkley in The New York Times Book , Donald Worster has been a leader in reshaping the study of American history.
Winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for his book Dust Bowl, Worster has helped bring
humanity's interaction with nature to the forefront of historical thinking.
Now, in The Wealth of Nature, he offers a series of thoughtful, eloquent essays which lay out his views on environmental history, tying the study of the past to today's agenda for change.

The Wealth of Nature captures the fruit of what Worster calls "my own intellectual turning to the land.
" History, he writes, represents a dialogue between humanity and naturethough it is usually reported as if it were simple dictation.
Worster takes as his point of departure the approach
expressed early on by Aldo Leopold, who stresses the importance of nature in determining human history Leopold pointed out that the spread of bluegrass in Kentucky, for instance, created new pastures and fed the rush of American settlers across the Appalachians, which affected the contest between
Britain, France, and the U.
S. for control of the area, Worster's own work offers an even more subtly textured understanding, noting in this example, for instance, that bluegrass itself was an import from the Old World which supplanted native vegetationa form of "environmental imperialism.
" He
ranges across such areas as agriculture, water development, and other questions,

examining them as environmental issues, showing how they have affectedand continue to affecthuman settlement.
Environmental history, he argues, is not simply the history of rural and wilderness areas cities clearly
have a tremendous impact on the land, on which they depend for their existence.
He argues for a comprehensive approach to understanding our past as well as our present in environmental terms,
"Nostalgia runs all through this society," Worster writes, "fortunately, for it may be our only hope of salvation.
" These reflective and engaging essays capture the fascination of environmental historyand the beauty of nature lost or endangeredunderscoring the importance of intelligent
action in the present.
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