The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States

In this landmark series of essays, Colorado State University history professor Fiege focuses on the crucial role of nature in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s philosophical development, the environmental effects of the Manhattan Project, and the conditions that made possible the energy crisis in the early 1970s, among other key moments in the country’s history. In one particularly effective example of his method, Fiege (Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West) examines the 19th-century cotton trade, whose environmental preconditions radically affected the South’s economic and political trajectory. Nature, Fiege asserts, had a much larger role in the formation of our present than we acknowledge, and his project is to remind us that “the republic is a composite of flesh as well as of ideas, of beating hearts as much as of rocks, trees, lead, soil, or steel.” Fiege’s prose is eminently readable, with useful pictures, maps, and footnotes throughout. Though using the term “nature” metaphorically dilutes the word’s potency and the analysis of diverse historical moments flattens potential nuance, overall, the book is an original contribution. It unveils the constant role of that “mass of human and animal life that energized the nation and created the world that we call our own.” (Apr.)