Historical geography Books

Book SynopsisThis book provides an informal history and tour of the Niagara Escarpment, the backbone of Ontario and one of Canada's natural wonders. Stretching from Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula to Niagara Falls, the escarpment exhibits a wide diversity of landscape, people, and industry, in the present and in the past.The authors have divided it into three major regions. the rugged northern region which retains much of its primitive beauty serves primarily as a haven for tourists and summer residents, although it was once a centre for fishing and lumbering. Change has come also to the middle area. Its waterpower once made it an industrial region, but today the land from Meaford to Dundas is largely agricultural. The south, so rich in the early history of Canada, is heavily settled and industrialized.Over 80 photographs, taken by William H. Gillard, who himself lives on 'the mountain,' capture the various facets of the region. The rugged cliffs of the Bruce Peninsula

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Book Synopsis How the West Was Drawn explores the geographic and historical experiences of the Pawnees, the Iowas, and the Lakotas during the European and American contest for imperial control of the Great Plains during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. David Bernstein argues that the American West was a collaborative construction between Native peoples and Euro-American empires that developed cartographic processes and culturally specific maps, which in turn reflected encounter and conflict between settler states and indigenous peoples. Bernstein explores the cartographic creation of the Trans-Mississippi West through an interdisciplinary methodology in geography and history.He shows how the Pawnees and the Iowas—wedged between powerful Osages, Sioux, the horse- and captive-rich Comanche Empire, French fur traders, Spanish merchants, and American Indian agents and explorers—devised strategies of survivance and diplomacy to retain autonomy during this era.TTrade Review"The book's well-sourced revisionist examination of history through the eyes of both Euro- and Native Americans, and the influence of indigenous knowledge on cartography, is compelling, and thus it is a worthy addition to any historical examination of the Trans-Mississippi West."—Brian Croft, Nebraska History"Bernstein provides an interesting read on the importance of cartography and the cultural construction of the Trans-Mississippi West that is well worth reading for historians, cartographers, and cultural geographers, specialists and nonspecialists alike."—Ellen R. Hansen, Kansas History"David Bernstein's book adds fresh nuance to our understanding of the American West, particularly in regard to the creation of maps and boundaries."—Matthew K. Guske, Chronicles of Oklahoma"By examining the motives and process of mapmaking, Bernstein restores historical agency to the Pawnee and other tribes."—R. Dorman, Choice"Mapping does not stop. We find today the same kind of negotiated, contested, politically charged mapping process happening around the world as Bernstein finds in the nineteenth-century American West. Thus, another important contribution of Bernstein's work is its potential to shape how we think about and engage in mapping today."—John Krygier, South Dakota History"Bernstein's interesting and scholarly study discusses how the westward movement made maps necessary administrative mechanisms."—Lynn Bueling, Roundup Magazine"David Bernstein's How the West Was Drawn offers an important reassessment of the cartographic history of the American West, exploring how Plains Indians—specifically, Iowas, Pawnees, and Lakotas participated in the mapping and remapping of the region in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."—Alessandra Link, Environmental History"Throughout the volume, Bernstein not only makes a convincing argument, but he also corrects some of the problematic ideas scholars have advanced or embraced over the years. This is a well-researched book. The author draws from manuscript sources at the Kansas Historical Society, the Missouri History Museum, the National Archives, and the Newberry Library, among other repositories, not to mention newspapers, government documents, Native American records, and other published primary sources. . . . In addition, it would be a mistake not to mention and commend the book’s excellent selection of 46 map images. . . . Bernstein does an excellent job integrating these maps into his analysis and the University of Nebraska Press should be commended for their investment in this incredible level of illustration. This is a book that will work well in graduate seminars on Native American history, the history of the antebellum U.S., the history of cartography, and colonialism. Anyone interested in space and place in the North America would do well to read this book."—Evan Rothera, Reviews in History"Bernstein provides important tools for thinking about maps in complex ways. He carefully draws attention to the multifaceted processes and power involved in their construction, which, in turn, opens up many avenues for understanding how and why U.S. expansion developed as it did."—Rebekah M. K. Mergenthal, Annals of Iowa"Bernstein not only engages the historiography of Native America and cartography, but also joins a growing corpus that reassesses U.S. expansion from the point of view of those on the ground who would subvert and offer contingencies to the path of empire. Bernstein draws these insights from a well executed study centered around the Pawnees of the early nineteenth century who occupied the region that would become the states of Kansas and Nebraska."—Jimmy L. Bryan Jr., Western Historical QuarterlyTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1: Living in Indian Country 1. Constructing Indian Country 2. Sharitarish and the Possibility of Treaties 3. Nonparticipatory Mapping Part 2: The Rise and Fall of “Indian Country” 4. The Cultural Construction of “Indian Country” 5. Science and the Destruction of “Indian Country” Part 3: Reclaiming Indian Country 6. The Metaphysics of Indian Naming Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA fast-paced, fact-filled comparative essay in critical topography and cultural geography that cuts across the "islandologies" of different cultures and argues for a world of islands.Trade Review"Islandology is one of the most remarkable books you will read in a long time and is thoroughly recommended to all who wish to inquire into how geography is enmeshed in the human imagination" -- Robert J. Mayhew * Journal of Historical Geography *"Islandology is a compendium, a word and image album, a guide bleu, and a piece of theory all rolled into one. In its dense and playful disposition of islandological lexemes, examples, paradigms, facts, language games, the book is a voracious post modernist cosmography. Shell, a cosmographer for the Internet era, exposes a poignant transcendental restlessness in his conceptual and literary mappings of the island in the imaginary of modernity. Such a generous study in critical topography belongs alongside Lefebvre, Serres and Yi-Fu Tuan in creating new horizons for the study of place and landscape across many fields and disciplines." -- Jonathan Bordo"Islandology is one of those rare works that perfectly reflects its object of study. Instead of being a contribution to a particular field of research, it is an island of scholarship that allows us to chart submerged connections among such fields as cultural geography, literary analysis, and socio-political inquiry." -- Peter Fenves

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Book SynopsisThe Colorado River Plateau is home to two of the best-known landscapes in the world: Rainbow Bridge in southern Utah and Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border. Thomas Harvey artfully tells how Navajos and Anglo-Americans created fabrics of meaning out of this stunning desert landscape.Trade ReviewRainbow Bridge to Monument Valley provides a captivating analysis of the meaning Anglos and Indians have made from two of the West's most iconic sites. In exploring these spaces and their place in the American and the Navajo imagination, Thomas J. Harvey makes a significant contribution to the cultural history of the American West and the nation."" - David Wrobel, author of Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West""Thomas J. Harvey's work on the Utah-Arizona border region . . . will stake out new intellectual terrain for scholars seeking to explore the relationship between geography, cultural nationalism, and Occidentalism in twentieth-century America. . . . Harvey shows quite clearly how layers of meaning continue to be attached to the region and how modern mythmaking is perpetuated.""Carter Jones Meyer co-author of Selling the Indian: Commercializing and Appropriating American Indian Cultures

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Book SynopsisLed by Gen. Patrick Connor, the Powder River Indian Expedition into Wyoming sought to punish tribes for raids earlier that year. Patrick Connor’s War describes the troops’ movement into hostile territory while struggling with bad weather, supply shortages, and communication problems.

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Book SynopsisRecounts the history of San Francisco from Indian village to world-class metropolis, focusing on the interactions between the city and the land and on the generations of people who have transformed them both.

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Book SynopsisFollows three centuries of human efforts to inhabit and control the lower Mississippi River delta, the vast watery flatlands spreading across much of southern Louisiana. Adam Mandelman finds that people's use of technology to tame unruly nature in the region has produced interdependence with - rather than independence from - the environment.Trade ReviewThe Place with No Edge documents and interprets the environmental history of the Mississippi Delta in a way that also sheds light on the broader topic of human/environment interaction over time. Mandelman lays out the story of people reorganizing their environment, and in the process succumbing to the erroneous conclusion that they had managed to conquer and control nature in a more or less permanent way.

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Book SynopsisExamines the hidden histories behind one of the nineteenth-century South's most famous maps: Norman's Chart of the Lower Mississippi River, created by surveyor Marie Adrien Persac before the Civil War and used for decades to guide the pilots of river vessels.

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Book SynopsisBridging the fields of environmental history and American studies, Rendering Nature examines surprising interconnections between nature and culture in distinct places, times, and contexts over the course of U.S. history.Trade Review"Rendering Nature collects the work of exemplary scholars working at the nexus of the vibrant fields of American studies and environmental history: simultaneously collaborative and ambitious." * Andrew Isenberg, author of Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 *Table of ContentsChapter 1. The Nature-Culture Paradox —Marguerite S. Shaffer and Phoebe S. K. Young PART I. ANIMALS Chapter 2. Beasts of the Southern Wild: Slaveholders, Slaves, and Other Animals in Charles Ball's Slavery in the United States —Thomas G. Andrews Chapter 3. Stuffed: Nature and Science on Display John Herron Chapter 4. Digit's Legacy: Reconsidering the Human-Nature Encounter in a Global World —Marguerite S. Shaffer PART II. BODIES Chapter 5. The Gulick Family and the Nature of Adolescence —Susan A. Miller Chapter 6. Children of Light: The Nature and Culture of Suntanning —Catherine Cocks Chapter 7. Dr. Spock Is Worried: Visual Media and the Emotional History of American Environmentalism —Finis Dunaway PART III. PLACES Chapter 8. Prototyping Natures: Technology, Labor, and Art on Atomic Frontiers —Andrew Kirk Chapter 9. River Rats in the Archive: The Colorado River and the Nature of Texts —Annie Gilbert Coleman Chapter 10. Rocks of Ages: The Decadent Desert and Sepulchral Time —Frieda Knobloch PART IV. POLITICS Chapter 11. Winning the War at Manzanar: Environmental Patriotism and the Japanese American Incarceration —Connie Y. Chiang Chapter 12. Unthinkable Visibility: Pigs, Pork, and the Spectacle of Killing and Meat —Brett Mizelle Chapter 13. "Bring Tent": The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Public Nature —Phoebe S. K. Young Notes List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisArgues that our understanding of the production of national space during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries must account for sites of resistance and opposition to hegemonic forms of geographical representation, such as the map.Trade ReviewSills persuasively argues that there is no coherent British national identity based on a coherent mapping of national space. Rather, national identity hinged on local places and neighborhoods through which the individual connected with the national. The nature of those neighborhoods was the subject of diverse discourses, promoted by the emergent public sphere and shaped through their interplay of textual and graphic maps. An original book grounded on wide-ranging but secure scholarship." - Matthew H. Edney, University of Southern Maine, author of Cartography: The Ideal and Its History"This ambitious book gathers a stunning variety of maps and texts across the long eighteenth century to show how local spaces refashion themselves in relation to the nation as that nation behaves imperially towards its own." - Cynthia Wall, University of Virginia Press, author of Grammars of Approach: Landscape, Narrative, and the Linguistic Picturesque

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Book SynopsisUses the methodologies of critical geography, as well as literary criticism and theory, to detail the conflicted and often adversarial relationship between cartographic and literary representations of the nation and its geography.Trade ReviewSills persuasively argues that there is no coherent British national identity based on a coherent mapping of national space. Rather, national identity hinged on local places and neighborhoods through which the individual connected with the national. The nature of those neighborhoods was the subject of diverse discourses, promoted by the emergent public sphere and shaped through their interplay of textual and graphic maps. An original book grounded on wide-ranging but secure scholarship." - Matthew H. Edney, University of Southern Maine, author of Cartography: The Ideal and Its History"This ambitious book gathers a stunning variety of maps and texts across the long eighteenth century to show how local spaces refashion themselves in relation to the nation as that nation behaves imperially towards its own." - Cynthia Wall, University of Virginia Press, author of Grammars of Approach: Landscape, Narrative, and the Linguistic Picturesque

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Book SynopsisTo join a conversation, one must know what is being said. Writing Early America is a field report on the current state of the historiography on the colonial era - from the time of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the end of the American Revolution around 1784.Table of Contents Introduction The Historiography of Early America Early American History in Academic Journals #VastEarlyAmerica? Themes and Methods The World of Early America (1): Wealth, Commerce and Environment The World of Early America (2): Slavery The World of Early America (3): Indigenous Peoples The World of Early America (4): Gender Continuity, Stability and Prosperity: Eighteenth-Century British History Managing Difference and Engaging Power: The Imperial Turn The American Revolution Conclusion

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Book SynopsisTo join a conversation, one must know what is being said. Writing Early America is a field report on the current state of the historiography on the colonial era - from the time of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the end of the American Revolution around 1784.Table of Contents Introduction The Historiography of Early America Early American History in Academic Journals #VastEarlyAmerica? Themes and Methods The World of Early America (1): Wealth, Commerce and Environment The World of Early America (2): Slavery The World of Early America (3): Indigenous Peoples The World of Early America (4): Gender Continuity, Stability and Prosperity: Eighteenth-Century British History Managing Difference and Engaging Power: The Imperial Turn The American Revolution Conclusion

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Book SynopsisProvides a sweeping reinterpretation of the post-Civil War South by framing the New South as a struggle over environmental stewardship. William Bryan writes the region into the national conservation movement for the first time and shows that business leaders played a key role shaping the ideals of American conservationists.

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Book SynopsisIn 1800, the highlands of Sri Lanka had some of the most biologically diverse primary tropical rainforest ecosystems in the world. By 1900, only a few craggy corners and mountain caps had been spared the fire stick.

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Book SynopsisHighland Sanctuary unravels the complex interactions among agriculture, herding, forestry, the colonial state, and the landscape itself. Conte’s study illuminates the debate over conservation, arguing that contingency and chance, the stuff of human history, have shaped forests in ways that rival the power of nature.Trade Review“This fascinating study deserves the attention of a wide variety of scholars and development experts. Highly recommended.” * Choice *“This is a notable addition to the environmental history of Tanzania. It is a work that neatly blends archival and field research, and the approach of the author is both sensitive and humane.” * American Historical Review *“Conte’s history is a solid one…His volume is a useful addition to the corpus of environmental case studies in East Africa.” * The International Journal of African Historical Studies *

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Book SynopsisOnce the grain basket for South Africa, much of Lesotho has become a scarred and degraded landscape. The nation’s spectacular erosion and gullying have concerned environmentalists and conservationists for more than half a century.Trade Review“Undoubtedly one of the most important books written to date on any part of the environmental history of Africa. It stands out in the discipline of environmental history in general as an unusually sophisticated work of great insight and explanatory power.”

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Book SynopsisMany students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds—as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists.Trade Review“This remarkable work on the Serengeti area in Tanzania will be of great value to Africans and non-Africans alike, including researchers in African history, anthropology, and geography.... Highly recommended.” * Choice *“Jan Bender Shetler has written an exceptionally erudite work that contributes in seminal ways to the fields of both African and environmental history and provides an innovative new model for analysing oral histories through an environmental lens… . Highly recommended!” * Journal of Africa *“Imagining Serengeti takes its place in a sophisticated literature on landscape and ecology in Africa.…Shetler’s contribution is a particularly distinguished one, not least for the array of approaches she has brought to her project.…(T)his is a landmark volume, and it will be required reading in African and environmental history.” * American Historical Review *“Shetler’s book provides a completely new analysis of the Serengeti debate by adding the voices of a forgotten population, the peoples of the western Serengeti.... The centrality of the landscape to Serengeti peoples’ identitites, the complexity of local environmental knowledge, and the deep historical and emotional attachments to place are thus illustrated in vivid detail.” * African Studies Review *“Shetler provides a thorough critique of...colonial conservation policy, which, without reference to the region’s ecological or social past, redefined the Serengeti as a wilderness, initiating a process of fortress conservation.... The book’s pronounced spatial perspectives and ecological focus demonstrate how meaningful the history of a place is to the people whose ancestors claimed, measured and manipulated this region.” * Journal of African History *“This is an extraordinary book by an historian of uncommon erudition and originality.... For the reader whose primary interest in the Serengeti is its wildlife, the lesson that jumps off the pages is that, far from pristine wilderness, this is profoundly humanized territory, occupied and transformed through human labor and imagination for millennia.” * International Journal of African Historical Studies *“This work will come as a welcome reminder of what a fine harvest of historical data can be had from a careful culling of the oral histories of Africa’s numerous decentralised societies.... Shetler...has offered both environmental and African oral historians a cornucopia.” * Environment and History *“The Serengeti ecosystem is a symbol of global conservation efforts, but in conservationist literature the agricultural and agro-pastoral peoples who lived on the western reaches of the ecosystem became little more than ‘poachers’ who had no legitimate claim to the land or resources of the park. In this fascinating book on a topic of importance to specialists in several different fields, Jan Bender Shetler attempts to provide a corrective to this perception.” * coeditor of Custodians of the Land: Ecology & Culture in the History of Tanzania *

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Book SynopsisMany students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds—as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists.Trade Review“This remarkable work on the Serengeti area in Tanzania will be of great value to Africans and non-Africans alike, including researchers in African history, anthropology, and geography.... Highly recommended.” * Choice *“Jan Bender Shetler has written an exceptionally erudite work that contributes in seminal ways to the fields of both African and environmental history and provides an innovative new model for analysing oral histories through an environmental lens… . Highly recommended!” * Journal of Africa *“Imagining Serengeti takes its place in a sophisticated literature on landscape and ecology in Africa.…Shetler’s contribution is a particularly distinguished one, not least for the array of approaches she has brought to her project.…(T)his is a landmark volume, and it will be required reading in African and environmental history.” * American Historical Review *“Shetler’s book provides a completely new analysis of the Serengeti debate by adding the voices of a forgotten population, the peoples of the western Serengeti.... The centrality of the landscape to Serengeti peoples’ identitites, the complexity of local environmental knowledge, and the deep historical and emotional attachments to place are thus illustrated in vivid detail.” * African Studies Review *“Shetler provides a thorough critique of...colonial conservation policy, which, without reference to the region’s ecological or social past, redefined the Serengeti as a wilderness, initiating a process of fortress conservation.... The book’s pronounced spatial perspectives and ecological focus demonstrate how meaningful the history of a place is to the people whose ancestors claimed, measured and manipulated this region.” * Journal of African History *“This is an extraordinary book by an historian of uncommon erudition and originality.... For the reader whose primary interest in the Serengeti is its wildlife, the lesson that jumps off the pages is that, far from pristine wilderness, this is profoundly humanized territory, occupied and transformed through human labor and imagination for millennia.” * International Journal of African Historical Studies *“This work will come as a welcome reminder of what a fine harvest of historical data can be had from a careful culling of the oral histories of Africa’s numerous decentralised societies.... Shetler...has offered both environmental and African oral historians a cornucopia.” * Environment and History *“The Serengeti ecosystem is a symbol of global conservation efforts, but in conservationist literature the agricultural and agro-pastoral peoples who lived on the western reaches of the ecosystem became little more than ‘poachers’ who had no legitimate claim to the land or resources of the park. In this fascinating book on a topic of importance to specialists in several different fields, Jan Bender Shetler attempts to provide a corrective to this perception.” * coeditor of Custodians of the Land: Ecology & Culture in the History of Tanzania *

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Book SynopsisFor better or worse, the view through a car’s windshield has redefined how we see the world around us.Trade Review“Although the contributors’ particular interests vary widely, these questions lend The World beyond the Windshield a cohesion that is rare and admirable among scholarly anthologies.... The World beyond the Windshield is a valuable and sometimes surprising contribution to the comparative social history of technology, the environment, and automotive transportation.” * Technology and Culture *“We accept that the coming of the automobile was a technological revolution, but we have not fully appreciated how it was a perceptual revolution as well. The essays in this wonderful volume not only provide a clear and graceful journey through various North American and European landscapes of automobility. They also reveal a fascinating and formative set of relations between designers and consumers. The World Beyond the Windshield is comparative history at its best.” * author of Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement *“Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller‘s anthology, The World Beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe, marks the beginning of a new and much needed discourse on the subject (historical studies of the automotive landscape).…The essays in The World Beyond the Windshield are accessible and well researched.” * The Journal of Transport History *“Through analyses of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Needles Highway, and the Washington Beltway, as well as roads in Italy, Nazi Germany, the former East Germany, and postwar U.K., the authors document the transatlantic exchange of ideas about technology and environment. In the process, they also demonstrate how these ideas have been appropriated for national and transnationalistic ends.” * APADE, Indiana University *“(The World beyond the Windshield’s) contributions significantly extend our understanding of the processes through which 20th century highways were envisaged, designed, build, and used.” * Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Global Geschichte... *“A remarkably interesting account of how the various interests, priorities, and perceptions among both highway builders and users interacted in different historical contexts to produce the particular kinds of roads that we see today and so often take for granted.” * H-German *

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Book SynopsisThe Game of Conservation is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable examination of nature protection around the world.Twentieth-century nature conservation treaties often originated as attempts to regulate the pace of killing rather than as attempts to protect animal habitat.Trade Review“The book’s expository prose style is in tune with its overall design: clarity and utility are foremost.… The Game of Conservation will be a valuable resource for any scholar of conservation, colonialism or international treaty making.” * Environment and History *“The Game of Conservation is a concise, well-researched, and nicely presented study of pioneering wildlife protection treaties from the first half of the twentieth century.… This study offers a valuable model for environmental historians seeking to provide accessible and insightful scholarship that transcends national boundaries.” * Environmental History *“An impressive and fresh approach to studying the environment in the twenty–first century.”“In an engaging style reminiscent of a mystery novel, Cioc relates the historical, political, sociological, and ecological stories behind the treaties.…Knowing the origins of animal protection efforts does much to explain the conservation problems these species still face.” * Choice *

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Book SynopsisThrough the ages, rabies has exemplified the danger of diseases that transfer from wild animals to humans and their domestic stock. In South Africa, rabies has been on the rise since the latter part of the twentieth century despite the availability of postexposure vaccines and regular inoculation campaigns for dogs.InTrade Review“Brown has done a brilliant piece of detective work to trace the erratic progress of the disease through the region in the twentieth century. She integrates an innovative history of science and medicine with a complex understanding of the ecology of disease. All of this is told in an engaging narrative which captures the cultural and political significance of rabies in societies riven by divisions of class and race.”“A compelling history of one of the most gruesome epidemic diseases that affect both humans and animals…. In seven chapters Brown is not only writing a history of rabies in colonial and post-colonial Southern Africa but shows how medical history can be as much environmental history as it is the history of ideas and of course social history.” * Environment and History *“Karen Brown demonstrates in her well-researched survey that the history of rabies in South Africa involved not only tranformations in veterinary practices, in epidemiology, in conservation, and in public health policy but also in wildlife. Over the twentieth century, the disease adapted to a variety of faunal vectors, including jackals, tigers, lions, mongooses, meerkats, and wild, stray, and domestic dogs.” * ISIS *“With few full studies of rabies available, Brown’s ecohistorical perspective will generate more than parochial interest.” * Choice *“No matter whether one’s chief interest lies in the human or animal component of her tale, Dr. Brown gives much food for thought in her revelation of human-animal interactions and how infections pass between animals and people.…In addition to the lively and informed nature of Dr. Brown’s writing, Mad Dogs and Meerkats is also readily accessible to the layperson. Dr. Brown includes many quotations from writers and experts in the field, always ensuring that such quotations are pertinent and salient, while restricting them to the most relevant utterances made by these professionals.” * New York Journal of Books *

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Book SynopsisEnvironment at the Margins brings literary and environmental studies into a robust interdisciplinary dialogue, challenging dominant ideas about nature, conservation, and development in Africa and exploring alternative narratives offered by writers and environmental thinkers.Trade Review“Ecocritical studies have long neglected the postcolonial regions of the world, so it’s refreshing and timely to see a collection of essays focused entirely on Africa. This collection is the first of its kind and as such is positioned to make a vital intervention in postcolonial, ecocritical, and African studies.”“A groundbreaking intervention into African, postcolonial, literary, and environmental studies.” * Research in African Literatures *

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Book SynopsisMalaria is an infectious disease like no other: it is a dynamic force of nature and Africa’s most deadly and debilitating malady. James C. McCann tells the story of malaria in human, narrative terms and explains the history and ecology of the disease through the science of landscape change. All malaria is local.Trade Review“This is one of the most important books written on Africa in the last ten years—indeed, in any ten years. If this book does not win a prize, then there is truly no justice.…A superb topic, handled here by an accomplished historian at the peak of his powers…The epilogue is simply magnificent. Sparse, almost curt, it makes the case with blinding clarity…The past lives with us. The future is about adaptability, not progress.”“McCann’s work is truly a must-read for experts in many fields, from public health, agriculture, and history, to politics and development. This book is a brilliant demonstration of the deeply local and highly adaptable nature of disease and mortality, and the ways in which the historical ecology of disease effects household decision-making and trends in food production and economic development on a national scale.” * Focus on the Horn *“This thorough country history … explores malaria’s etiology, effects, and the challenges of minimizing, if not controlling, its impact. Historian McCann draws on decades of Ethiopian field experience and familiarity with its historical sources. … Fascinating anecdotes reveal local disease understandings, often blaming malign spirits (hence the subtitle). …Malaria severely challenges public health, but this study will aid the struggle. Summing Up: Recommended.” * CHOICE *“Amid renewed calls for global malaria eradication, historian James C. McCann delivers a timely reminder of the complexity and resilience of malaria. His argument concerns interdisciplinarity, humility and scale. … McCann’s unique accomplishment is the incorporation of a sophisticated and complex biomedical hypothesis of modern malaria epidemiology into a nuanced historical and cultural narrative. … It will be useful for students of public health and its history.” * Social History of Medicine *“McCann writes history with an ethnographic sensibility and a solid grasp of the science. His delightful turn of phrase and accessible writing style make this work an enjoyable read for specialists and non-specialists alike. … [He] eloquently describes the social, economic and political disturbances central to malaria’s success, beautifully explains the distinctiveness of this infectious disease, and sensitively links science with illness narratives. …Readers will be left not just knowing more about Ethiopia and malaria, but with an analytical framework with which to enquire about malaria in other locations as well.” * Human Ecology *

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Book SynopsisIn Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula, Benjamin Reilly illuminates a previously unstudied phenomenon: the large-scale employment of people of African ancestry as slaves in agricultural oases within the Arabian Peninsula.Trade Review“A lucid and compelling account of the slave experience in a region long ignored by historians of slavery…. [It is] a valuable case study that underscores the need for historians to pay closer attention to the ways in which environmental factors shaped the slave experience in various parts of the world.”“Reilly’s valuable book is a rare environmental and medical history of the Arabian Peninsula, which fills a gap in the literature. This study will benefit not only specialists in environmental history but also students and researchers of the history of medicine and technology.” * Canadian Journal of History *“Reilly's valuable book is a rare environmental and medical history of the Arabian Peninsula, which fills a gap in the literature. This study will benefit not only specialists in environmental history but also students and researchers of the history of medicine and technology.” * Canadian Journal of History *“Reilly has been particularly resourceful in drawing upon diverse disciplines and datasets. The result is a bold, stimulating study that will hopefully provoke furth scholarly engagement with this important topic.” * International Journal of Archaeology and Social Sciences in the Arabian Peninsula *“Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria successfully illuminates the history of unfree laborers in a little studied region and is able to do so persuasively by using limited source material.” * Journal of Social History *

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Book SynopsisIn Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula, Benjamin Reilly illuminates a previously unstudied phenomenon: the large-scale employment of people of African ancestry as slaves in agricultural oases within the Arabian Peninsula.Trade Review“A lucid and compelling account of the slave experience in a region long ignored by historians of slavery…. [It is] a valuable case study that underscores the need for historians to pay closer attention to the ways in which environmental factors shaped the slave experience in various parts of the world.”“Reilly’s valuable book is a rare environmental and medical history of the Arabian Peninsula, which fills a gap in the literature. This study will benefit not only specialists in environmental history but also students and researchers of the history of medicine and technology.” * Canadian Journal of History *“Reilly's valuable book is a rare environmental and medical history of the Arabian Peninsula, which fills a gap in the literature. This study will benefit not only specialists in environmental history but also students and researchers of the history of medicine and technology.” * Canadian Journal of History *“Reilly has been particularly resourceful in drawing upon diverse disciplines and datasets. The result is a bold, stimulating study that will hopefully provoke furth scholarly engagement with this important topic.” * International Journal of Archaeology and Social Sciences in the Arabian Peninsula *“Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria successfully illuminates the history of unfree laborers in a little studied region and is able to do so persuasively by using limited source material.” * Journal of Social History *

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Book SynopsisSafari Nation tells the history of the Kruger National Park through a black perspective, helping explain why Africa’s national parks—often derided by scholars as colonial impositions—survived the end of white rule on the continent.Trade Review“In Safari Nation, the Kruger Park and South African ideas of nature and nationality are revealed in profoundly new and insightful ways. Jacob Dlamini captures South African experiences of nature and leisure that have largely escaped the historical profession, focusing his sharp eye on the significant minority of black South Africans who managed to live ’with—as opposed to under—colonialism and apartheid.’ An enjoyable book, full of surprises.” -- Saul Dubow, author of South Africa's Struggle for Human Rights“An innovative work of intellectual, political, and social history, Safari Nation advances a compelling new explanation for why the ANC government has chosen not to dismantle colonial-era conservation projects whose origins lie in the dispossession of countless black families. Dlamini’s skillful storytelling throughout the book manages to balance compassion and concern for justice with careful empirical detail in a direct, graceful prose that makes Safari Nation an enjoyable read from start to finish.” -- Heidi Gengenbach, author of Binding Memories: Women as Makers and Tellers of History in Magude, Mozambique“Safari Nation is a highly original treatment of the history of Kruger National Park from a black perspective. Dlamini does not pursue a polarized interpretation of the park and conservation as simply white/colonial constructs but instead develops a growing literature that presents African people as engaged in many different facets of park history, as agents, and conservationists.” -- William Beinart, author of Rise of Conservation in South Africa“This book is about nature and black South Africans, but not as daughters and sons of the soil. Rather, Jacob Dlamini describes people on the move towards Kruger National Park, a place where conservation meant racial exclusion. On their way, they made a space of belonging through political effort, not nativism. Following its own eclectic route through rural reserves, cities, and mines, from Table Mountain to the lowveld, Safari Nation offers a bold argument that by making claim on the more-than-human world, black South Africans created an inclusive nation.” -- Nancy Jacobs, author of Birders of Africa: History of a Network“Safari Nation is more than a social history of KNP. It is a history of black South Africans opposed to injustice engaging with the land, leisure, what it means to be South African, and ‘ways of being’ under colonialism, apartheid, and a still unequal nation…. Indeed, Dlamini’s history of Kruger National Park makes a bold and hopeful statement about conservation and the land question in South Africa.” -- Jill E. Kelly * American Historical Review *

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Book SynopsisFrom radioactive waste to coral reefs, this environmental humanities volume reconsiders contamination and pollution as toxic timescapes: dynamic events with both temporal and spatial dimensions.Trade Review“An ambitiously interdisciplinary volume offering thought-provoking new ways for considering how toxic landscapes challenge a linear, colonialist, and capitalist model of time-as-progress.”Environmental toxicology, exposure, and risk cannot be meaningfully analyzed simply as unfortunate situations or events in isolation from the neocolonialism and complex sociocultural contexts that initiate and perpetuate them. This book is rich in detail, sobering in perspective, and for the most part pleasingly free of jargon. Summing up: highly recommended. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary environmental humanities volume that explores human-environment relationships on our permanently polluted planet.While toxicity and pollution are ever present in modern daily life, politicians, juridical systems, media outlets, scholars, and the public alike show great difficulty in detecting, defining, monitoring, or generally coming to terms with them. This volume's contributors argue that the source of this difficulty lies in the struggle to make sense of the intersecting temporal and spatial scales working on the human and more-than-human body, while continuing to acknowledge race, class, and gender in terms of global environmental justice and social inequality.The term toxic timescapes refers to this intricate intersectionality of time, space, and bodies in relation to toxic exposure. As a tool of analysis, it unpacks linear understandings of time and explores how harmful substances permeate temporal and physical space as both event and pTrade Review“An ambitiously interdisciplinary volume offering thought-provoking new ways for considering how toxic landscapes challenge a linear, colonialist, and capitalist model of time-as-progress.”Environmental toxicology, exposure, and risk cannot be meaningfully analyzed simply as unfortunate situations or events in isolation from the neocolonialism and complex sociocultural contexts that initiate and perpetuate them. This book is rich in detail, sobering in perspective, and for the most part pleasingly free of jargon. Summing up: highly recommended. * Choice *

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsDedicationAcknowledgmentsTributeINDEX MAPS AND LEGEND, VOLUME IIIPlates XII- XIXLEWIS AND CLARK TRAIL MAPS, VOLUME IIIColumbia River and Pacific CoastMap Numbers 334-380Alternate Return Route No. 1--Main Party, Nez Perce Trail, Southeast WashingtonMap Numbers 381- 393Alternate Return Routes No. 2 and 3--Main Party, Clearwater Country, IdahoMap Numbers 394-400Alternate Return Route No. 4--Clark Party, Big Hole, MontanaMap Numbers 401-411Alternate Return Route No. 5--Lewis Party, Lewis and Clark Pass, MontanaMap Numbers 412-434Alternate Return Route No. 6--Clark Party, Yellowstone River, MontanaMap Numbers 435-494Alternate Return Route No. 7--Lewis Party, Upper Marias, MontanaMap Numbers 495-527Mississippi River and St. Louis--Main PartyMap Numbers 528-530INDEX, VOLUME IIIOutbound, Winter Activity, and Return CampsErrata (Vols. I and II)

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Book SynopsisExploring the creation, transformation, and imagination of Russian space as a lens through which to understand Russia''s development over the centuries, this volume makes an important contribution to Russian studies and the new spatial history. It considers aspects of the relationship between place and power in Russia from the local level to the national and from the eighteenth century through the present.Essays include: Melissa K. Stockdale, What is a Fatherland? Changing Notions of Duty, Rights and Belonging in Russia; Mark Bassin, Nationhood, Natural Regions, Mestorazvitie: Environmental Discourses in Classic Eurasianism; John Randolph, Russian Route: The Politics of the Petersburg-Moscow Road, 1700-1800; Richard Stites, On the Dance Floor: Royal Power, Class, and Nationality in Servile Russia; Patricia Herlihy, Ab Oriente ad Ultimum Oriente: Eugen Scuyler, Russia and Central Asia; Robert Argenbright, Soviet Agitational Vehicles: Colonization from Place to Place; Christoph

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Book SynopsisExploring the creation, transformation, and imagination of Russian space as a lens through which to understand Russia's development over the centuries, this volume makes an important contribution to Russian studies and the "new spatial history." It considers aspects of the relationship between place and power in Russia from the local level to...

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Book SynopsisThe essays collected in Cultivating the Colonies demonstrate how the relationship between colonial power and nature revealsthe nature of power.Trade Review“Scholars of environmental history would benefit from reading this lucidly written book, especially because it discusses diverse cases and has useful references to vernacular sources.” * Technology and Culture *“A coherent and excellent volume on the environmental history of the arable and non-arable colonial world…this book is a valuable and important addition to global and comparative world environmental history.” * European History Quarterly *“Cultivating the Colonies embarks on an ambitious task, investigating the nuts and bolts of colonial environmental governance and understanding how that study can illuminate the modern complexities in post-independence states. The editors and authors have done well not to shy away from the complexity of their task. Rather than attempting to address every nuance of colonial history, Cultivating the Colonies provides well defined case studies that will serve as examples for future study and investigation of colonial management of nature and people.” * Middle Ground Journal *

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the ideas of space and place as manifested in medieval texts, art, and architecture.This interdisciplinary collection of sixteen essays explores the significance of space and place in Late Antique and medieval culture, as well as modern reimaginings of medieval topographies. Its case studies draw on a wide variety of critical approaches and cover architecture, the visual arts (painting and manuscript illumination), epic, romance, historiography, hagiography, cartography, travel writing, as well as modern English poetry. Challenging simplistic binaries of East and West, self and other, Muslim and Christian, the volume addresses the often unexpected roles played by space and place in the construction of individual and collective identities in religious and secular domains. The essays move through world spaces (mappaemundi, the exotic and the mundane East, the Mediterranean); empires, nations, and frontier zones; cities (Avignon, Jerusalem, and Reval); and courts, castles and the architectureof subjectivity, closing with modern visions of the medieval world. They explore human movement in space and the construction of time and place in memory. Taking up pressing contemporary issues such as nationalism, multilingualism, multiculturalism and confessional relations, they find that medieval material provides narratives that we can use today in our negotiations with the past. Julian Weiss is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Studies, Sarah Salih Senior Lecturer in English, at King's College London. Contributors: Richard Talbert, Paul Freedman, Sharon Kinoshita, Luke Sunderland, Julian Weiss, Sarah Salih, Konstantin Klein, Katie Clark, Elizabeth Monti, Elina Gertsman, Elina Räsänen, Geoff Rector, Nicolay Ostrau, Andrew Cowell, Joshua Davies, Chris Jones, Matthew FrancisTrade ReviewA collection that medieval historians should engage with in terms of how both the sources and modern scholars construct ideas of place and space. * HISTORY *Table of ContentsPeutinger's Map Before Peutinger: Circulation and Impact, AD 300-1500 - Richard Talbert Locating the Exotic - Paul Freedman Locating the Medieval Mediterranean - Sharon Kinoshita Multilingualism and Empire in L'Entrée d'Espagne - Luke Sunderland Remembering Spain in the Medieval European Epic: A Prospect - Julian Weiss Lydgate's Landscape History - Sarah Salih The Politics of Holy Space: Jerusalem in the Theodosian Era (379-457 CE) - Konstantin Klein Redefining Space in Early Fourteenth-Century Avignon: The St-Etienne Episode Locating Legitimacy: Architectural Patronage in Schismatic Avignon Locating the Body in Late Medieval Revival - Elina Gertsman Literary Leisure and the Architectural Spaces of Early Anglo-Norman Literature - Geoff Rector Enclosures of Love: Locating Emotion in the Arthurian Romances Yvain/Iwein - Nicolay Ostrau The Subjectivity of Space: Walls and Castles in La Prise d'Orange - Andrew Cowell Relocating Anglo-Saxon England: Places of the Past in Basil Bunting's Briggflatts and Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns - Joshua Davies Recycling Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Richard Wilbur's `Junk' and a Self Study - C S Jones Rewriting Mandeville's Travels - Matthew Francis

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Book SynopsisA compelling history of seashells and the animals that make them, revealing what they have to tell us about nature, our changing oceans and ourselvesTrade Review"Will have you marveling at nature… Barnett’s account remarkably spirals out, appropriately, to become a much larger story about the sea, about global history and about environmental crises and preservation." -- 24 Books to Read this Summer - The New York Times Book Review"Cynthia Barnett presents us with a glittering Wunderkammer for our age, a staggeringly varied history — scientific, cultural, philosophical and economic — of one of the most beloved and enduring natural objects on Earth: the seashell... “The Sound of the Sea” is a glorious history of shells and of those who have loved shells. It is a history of fascination and of shame." -- Katherine Norbury - The Washington Post"“Seashells were money before coin, jewellery before gems, art before canvas,” says science writer Cynthia Barnett in her arresting meditation on shells and ocean history." -- Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week's best science picks - Nature

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Book SynopsisFrom Improvement to City Planning emphasizes the ways people in nineteenth-century America managed urban growth. Historian Henry Binford shows how efforts to improve space were entwined with the evolution of urban governance (i.e., regulation)—and also influenced by a small group of advantaged families.Binford looks specifically at Cincinnati, Ohio, then the largest and most important interior city west of the Appalachian Mountains. He shows that it was not just industrialization, but also beliefs about morality, race, health, poverty, and “slum” environments, that demanded an improvement of urban space. As such, movements for public parks and large-scale sanitary engineering in the 1840s and ’50s initiated the beginning of modern city planning. However, there were limitations and consequences to these efforts..Many Americans believed that remaking city environments could also remake citizens. From Improvement to City Planning examTrade Review“Binford’s fine and meticulous scholarship builds a compelling and important argument about the early decades of civic activism and planning in U.S. cities. Cincinnati is far less studied than other midwestern cities, but as Binford shows, it has a rich nineteenth-century historiography. His book shows how the physical and social fabric of the city were inextricably intertwined, neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block.”—Carl Abbott, Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, and author of How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America“An intellectual history as well as an urban history, From Improvement to City Planning demonstrates that Cincinnati was one of the most important cities west of the Appalachian Mountains during the nineteenth century. Binford effectively integrates issues of physical spatial management, evangelical religion, and applied science in the forms of new engineering and medical technologies. His argument is precise and distinctive and is sure to be influential. This important book has broad implications.”—Timothy Gilfoyle, Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, and author of A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York"In From Improvement to City Planning, Henry C. Binford offers a useful contribution to understandings of formative urban planning practices in the U.S., through an engaging narrative history of Cincinnati’s emergence as the ‘Queen City of the West.’ A significant strength of his account is the identification of two distinct periods in the ‘pre-history’ of American planning.... Binford’s insightful use of a broad range of historical sources allows him make a host of illuminating observations."—Housing Studies"Binford’s extensively researched book... is also a record of early concepts of public-private governance, character formation through moral influence, and 'improvement' played out within the expanding boundaries of the oldest, purely American big city in the United States.... [T]he book is clearly written...and would be a good introductory text on early U.S. urbanity."—Journal of Urban Affairs"The book is engagingly written and informative about the urban history of the Old Northwest.... Binford’s emphasis on the long history of ecological approaches to urban governance is also a valuable contribution.... The book’s strength lies in its detailed portrayals of what, how, and who accomplished these feats in Cincinnati."—Journal of American History

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Book SynopsisFrom Improvement to City Planning emphasizes the ways people in nineteenth-century America managed urban growth. Historian Henry Binford shows how efforts to improve space were entwined with the evolution of urban governance (i.e., regulation)—and also influenced by a small group of advantaged families.Binford looks specifically at Cincinnati, Ohio, then the largest and most important interior city west of the Appalachian Mountains. He shows that it was not just industrialization, but also beliefs about morality, race, health, poverty, and “slum” environments, that demanded an improvement of urban space. As such, movements for public parks and large-scale sanitary engineering in the 1840s and ’50s initiated the beginning of modern city planning. However, there were limitations and consequences to these efforts..Many Americans believed that remaking city environments could also remake citizens. From Improvement to City Planning examTrade Review“Binford’s fine and meticulous scholarship builds a compelling and important argument about the early decades of civic activism and planning in U.S. cities. Cincinnati is far less studied than other midwestern cities, but as Binford shows, it has a rich nineteenth-century historiography. His book shows how the physical and social fabric of the city were inextricably intertwined, neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block.”—Carl Abbott, Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, and author of How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America“An intellectual history as well as an urban history, From Improvement to City Planning demonstrates that Cincinnati was one of the most important cities west of the Appalachian Mountains during the nineteenth century. Binford effectively integrates issues of physical spatial management, evangelical religion, and applied science in the forms of new engineering and medical technologies. His argument is precise and distinctive and is sure to be influential. This important book has broad implications.”—Timothy Gilfoyle, Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, and author of A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York"In From Improvement to City Planning, Henry C. Binford offers a useful contribution to understandings of formative urban planning practices in the U.S., through an engaging narrative history of Cincinnati’s emergence as the ‘Queen City of the West.’ A significant strength of his account is the identification of two distinct periods in the ‘pre-history’ of American planning.... Binford’s insightful use of a broad range of historical sources allows him make a host of illuminating observations."—Housing Studies"Binford’s extensively researched book... is also a record of early concepts of public-private governance, character formation through moral influence, and 'improvement' played out within the expanding boundaries of the oldest, purely American big city in the United States.... [T]he book is clearly written...and would be a good introductory text on early U.S. urbanity."—Journal of Urban Affairs"The book is engagingly written and informative about the urban history of the Old Northwest.... Binford’s emphasis on the long history of ecological approaches to urban governance is also a valuable contribution.... The book’s strength lies in its detailed portrayals of what, how, and who accomplished these feats in Cincinnati."—Journal of American History

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Book SynopsisDrawing on a broad range of archival material, Jamin Wells examines how shipwrecks laid the groundwork for the beach tourism industry that would transform the American beach from coastal frontier to oceanfront playspace, spur substantial investment, reshape ideas about the coast, and turn the beach into a touchstone of the American experience.

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Book SynopsisBy delving into the complex, cross-generational exchanges that characterize any political project as rampant as empire, this thought-provoking study focuses on children and their ambivalent, intimate relationships with maps and practices of mapping at the dawn of the American Century'.

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Book SynopsisIn his book Fashioning the Canadian Landscape, J.I. Little examines how Canada, much like the United States, came to be identified with its natural landscape. Little argues that in contrast toAmerica, Canada's image was strongly influenced by the picturesque convention favoured by British travel writers.Trade Review"...Little’s essays suggest that nineteenth-century tourism provides a significant vantage point for understanding the interplay of different discourses and performances of ‘nation’ that occurred within the Dominion’s borders." -- Cecilia Morgan, University of Toronto * Histoire Sociale/Social History, vol 52 no 105, May '19 *"Why visit Canada but for its awe-inspiring natural spaces and picturesque villages? J.I. Little’s collection of essays details how travel writers from Britain, the United States, and Canada situated landscape at the center of Canadian identity and Canada’s purpose in the world. A collection of eight revised and two new essays carry the reader over 150 years and across what has become Canada, revealing ways in which writers connected identity to colonial landscape transformation." -- Rebecca Mancuso * American Review of Canadian Studies *"Little’s contribution comes from looking deeply at how a wide variety of landscapes in the provinces that are now Canada have been fashioned. The deep study of specific landscapes makes this collection a rewarding read." -- Eleanor Bird, Lancaster University * British Journal of Canadian Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 'Like a fragment of the old world': The Historical Regression of Quebec City in Travel Narratives and Tourist Guidebooks, 1776-1913 2 Canadian Pastoral: Promotional Images of British Colonization in Lower Canada's Eastern Townships during the 1830s 3 West Coast Picturesque: Class, Gender, and Race in a British Colonial Landscape, 1858-71 4 Scenic Tourism on the Northeastern Borderland: Lake Memphremagog's Steamboat Excursions and Resort Hotels, 1850-1900 5 Seeing Elemental Nature: An American Transcendentalist On and Off the Coast of Labrador, 1864-65 6 Travels in a Cold and Rugged Land: C.H. Farnham's Quebec Essays in Harper's Magazine, 1883-89 7 'A fine, hardy, good-looking race of people': Travellers, Tourism, and the Scots Identity on Cape Breton Island, 1859-1920 8 Picturing a National Landscape: Images of Nature in Picturesque Canada 9 Our Lady of the Snows: Rudyard Kipling's Imperialist Vision of Canada 10 A Country Without a Soul: Rupert Brooke's Gothic Vision of Canada Afterword: An Unknown Country?

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Book SynopsisAtlas of Nebraska presents maps and commentary about a variety of physiographic, climatological, demographic, political, social, economic, cultural, and other features of Nebraska.Trade Review"For anyone researching Nebraska history, this book will prove to be an essential tool as it carefully analyzes the state's data from prehistory through statehood."—Erik J. Wright, True West"Want to know where earthquakes have rattled Nebraska since statehood? There’s a map for that. How about the paths of tornadoes across the state? The origins of foreign-born Nebraskans? Areas state-designated as short of physicians, dentists and pharmacists? Or how horses have migrated from rural to urban areas? There are maps for all that. In fact, the atlas—the first of Nebraska published in more than three decades—chronicles the history of the state with more than 300 original, detailed and full-color maps accompanied by explanatory text. The coffee-table volume pokes into myriad subjects, including the state's geologic and prehistoric roots, American Indians and the fitful transition from territory to state."—David Hendee, Omaha World-Herald"It has been several decades since an effort has been made to produce an atlas of this kind. The updated data and techniques used in the production of this book are apparent when compared to the previous atlases. Overall, this book contains such a generous array of maps that it truly possesses something for everyone. Whether you're a cartophile or just someone living "The Good Life," the Atlas of Nebraska is a useful and enjoyable addition to any reference library."—Patrick Haynes, Nebraska History"Gorgeous. . . . Packed with scholarly resources, the book also offers an accessible resource for trivia buffs and those who eat, sleep and breathe Nebraska."—Nina Buck, Nebraska Life"Readers interested in the history of Nebraska will find the atlas a useful reference tool."—Russell S. Kirby, Historical Geography“The unassuming title of this atlas does not provide a hint of the diverse richness of its contents. Its abundant maps, its survey of our state’s geologic, prehistoric, Native American, and territorial and recent state history, as well as our climate and ecology, are just the beginning of a fact-filled treasure trove. What a wonderful gift to celebrate our state’s 150th birthday!”—Paul A. Johnsgard, winner of the National Conservation Achievement Award and author of Those of the Gray Wind: The Sandhill Cranes, New EditionTable of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Physical and Biological Environment Chapter 2. History Chapter 3. Population Chapter 4. Agriculture Chapter 5. Urban and Economic Patterns Chapter 6. Culture, Services, and Politics Bibliography

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Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the Second World War, Berliners grappled with how to rebuild their devastated city. In East Berlin, where the historic core of the city lay, decisions made by the socialist leadership about what should be restored, reconstructed, or entirely reimagined would have a tremendous and lasting impact on the urban landscape. Risen from Ruins examines the cultural politics of the rebuilding of East Berlin from the end of World War II until the construction of the Berlin Wall, combining political analysis with spatial and architectural history to examine how the political agenda of East German elites and the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) played out in the built environment. Following the destruction of World War II, the center of Berlin could have been completely restored and preserved, or razed in favor of a sanitized, modern city. The reality fell somewhere in between, as decision makers balanced historic preservation against the opportunity to model the Socialist future and reject the example of the Nazi dictatorship through architecture and urban design. Paul Stangl's analysis expands our understanding of urban planning, historic preservation, modernism, and Socialist Realism in East Berlin, shedding light on how the contemporary shape of the city was influenced by ideology and politics.Trade Review"Visitors to Berlin today may have no sense of the postwar history that significantly reshaped what East Berlin looks like now. Stangl's book is an indispensable guide to this complex past."—David F. Crew, Journal of Modern History"A compelling account of how Marxist-Leninist ideology, political contingencies, architectural discourses and urban planning paradigms informed and directed the reconstruction of East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic. This is a fascinating book and a timely contribution to the literature on the built environment of Berlin."—Maoz Azaryahu, University of Haifa"An impressively researched book, Risen from Ruins provides a comprehensive analysis of the politics of urban space in East Berlin. Its greatest achievement lies in capturing the dynamism of socialist realist architecture and the complexity of debates about historic preservation. A book of great breadth and depth, it deserves a wide readership among scholars of memory, urban space, and Soviet Communism."—Michael Meng, Clemson University"Stangl does an excellent job in highlighting the conflicts and irreconcilabilities that dominated the planning discussions of the immediate post-war era, employing his 'pathways of memory' device with great effect. What emerges is an impeccably well-researched and engaging work, amply illustrated and competently composed. The author more than meets his stated ambition to reveal the deep but complicated relationship between politics and planning during a period of tremendous political tension and instability. As such, students of communist politics and ideology will find every bit as much value in this work as those of architecture and urban planning."—Marcus Colla, Reviews in History"Paul Stangl's Risen from Ruins offers an in-depth study of East Berlin's reconstruction in the first decade after World War II....Stangl captures the combination of openness, excitement and frustration that marked the architectural rebuilding process in these years, revealing the complex processes that belie the simplicity of Socialist Realist theory....Stangl rewards careful readers by offering nuggets of new information or telling anecdotes on nearly every page."—Annemarie Sammartino, German History"[G]eographer Paul Stangl applies deep archival research to closely assess key East Berlin architectural projects before the construction of the Berlin Wall....[S]cholars with interest in Berlin or East German urban planning history are encouraged to explore his exhibition of how competing and overlapping planning agendas repeatedly decreed chaotic outcomes."—Andrew Demshuk, German Studies Review"Stangl adds to our understanding of the relatively well-researched socialist remodelling of East Berlin with a relevant book that impresses with its breadth and accessibility. For historians of East Germany, the strongest parts of the book are the sections that bring public opinion and the voices of local residents into the discussion of urban planning policies, such as the excellent chapter on Stalinallee."––Marcel Thomas, Urban History"The strengths of the book are undoubtedly the in-depth research behind the analysis as well as the ability of the author to break down theoretical debates....[Highly] recommended to all those interested in early GDR planning in Berlin."—Jan Musekamp, H-Urban"Paul Stangl's Risen from Ruins provides an evocative picture of East Berlin's postwar transition from Nazi to communist dictatorship."—Aristotle Kallis, Journal of Urban HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Landscapes of Commemoration 2. City Plans 3. Unter den Linden 4. From Royal Palace to Marx-Engels Square 5. Wilhelmstrasse 6. Stalinallee Conclusion

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Book SynopsisIn the summer of 1579 Francis Drake and all those aboard the Golden Hind were in peril. The ship was leaking and they were in search of a protected beach to careen the ship to make repairs. They searched the coast and made landfall in what they called a 'Fair and Good Bay', generally thought to be in California. They stacked the treasure they had recently captured from the Spanish onto on this sandy shore, repaired the ship, explored the country, and after a number of weeks they set sail for home. When they returned to England, they became the second expedition to circumnavigate the earth, after Magellan's voyage in 1522, and the first to return with its commander.Thunder Go North unravels the mysteries surrounding Drake’s famous voyage and summer sojourn in this bay. Comparing Drake's observations of the Natives' houses, dress, foods, language, and lifeways with ethnographic material collected by early anthropologists, Melissa Darby makes a compelling case that Drake and his crew landed not in California but on the Oregon coast. She also uncovers the details of how an early twentieth-century hoax succeeded in maintaining the California landing theory and silencing contrary evidence. Presented here in an engaging narrative, Darby's research beckons for history to be rewritten.

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Book SynopsisHow do borderlands work? How do they maintain their distinctive features in the face of concerted efforts on the part of nation-states to make each of their borderlines into a harsh demarcation? According to most contemporary political discourse and popular perceptions, the two borders of the United States West have little in common but understanding their borderlands’ similarities can help us understand some of the most powerful forces shaping human history and the world around us; understanding their historiographies gives us insight into borderlands historians’ unique methodology.Both Sides Now: Writing the Edges of the North American West brings together leading scholarship in a focused, synthetic survey of five themes in the history of the northern and southern borderlands: the borderlands as aboriginal homelands and the persistence of Indigenous territories and ways of being; imperial and national efforts to create binary notions of territory and identity; regulatory efforts aimed at stopping or limiting the movement of certain people across their borders; the weakening of those efforts by cross-border movement of capital, goods, and people, usually aided by state power, and the complex, binary-refusing identities that persist in borderlands communities.Historian Sheila McManus uses these themes to highlight the commonalities between the two borderlands’ histories and provides an overview and a starting point for experts and newcomers in the field of North American borderlands history to address new questions. By conceptualizing both borders together and focusing particular attention on race and gender as well as empire and nation, Both Sides Now provides a unique methodology in North American scholarship that emphasizes the connections between these borderlands and others around the world.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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