Southern United States: An Environmental History (Nature and Human Societies)

Book Description

"Its pictures are memories of moments a half century old or older...rich grays, luminous whites, black in the deepest shadows. Some have the feel of the work of Dorothea Lange or Walker Percy...a few have the almost surreal aspect of the work of Diane Arbus."-- Bill Strother, Hoosier Times, Bloomington, Indiana (January 7, 2007)

Internationally acclaimed photographer Jack Welpott grew up in southern Indiana, served in World War II, and returned to the Hoosier state to attend Indiana University. Unsure of his direction, he enrolled in a photography class and met the legendary photography instructor Henry Holmes Smith. Under his tutelage, Welpott thrived. He became enthralled with black-and-white photography as a fine art form, and never looked back.

Driving to Stony Lonesome chronicles his years in Bloomington, Indiana. The 100+ photographs that make up the core of this gorgeous book are intense and personal, and include many fine examples of environmental portraiture of which Welpott was a master.

Welpott, now in his middle 80s, provides personal anecdotes along with the photographs. He didn't just take "art photographs"--he captured the heart of his subjects. By getting to know the people he photographed and winning their confidence, he gained an understanding of his subjects that would not belie a camera. This strategy served him well, and the photographs in this book richly capture life in rural southern Indiana.

Customer Reviews:

EVERY aspiring photographer should study it, none should buy it.......2007-08-18

This book should be in every public library in the country, although on no photographer's personal bookshelf.
There is not a single image in this book which I would want to hang on my wall, yet the overall quality of the photographs is superb. It is the sort of work by dedicated photographic enthusiasts whose prints fill countless albums, envelopes, drawers, and old print paper boxes throughout the world.
The importance of the book lies more in its instructive value than in its aesthetic appeal. There are no illustrations of Ansel Adam's "Moonrise," or Karsh's "Churchill," to inspire young (or older) photographers to greatness. Nowhere else that I am aware is available to show the reality of how the plain, often simple images of ordinary events touching the photographer's life are where and how the study of the photographic art should proceed. Not as an end, but as a significant intermediate stage of learning.
For a photographer to achieve this level of vision would be more than most of us could ask for, to exceed it would be a blessing of great personal satisfaction.
There is even a chapter of really (unintentionally) bad landscape photographs at the end, to confirm that the path of improvement does not always lead upward. Even the title is a hoax. There are only two images taken in those important depression and war years between 1936 and 1950.
It is somewhat like a song with great, uplifting words, and an unsingable melody.

Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South

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Mournful melodies

Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South
Jack Temple Kirby
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0807830577
Release Date: 2006-10-11

Book Description

The American South is generally warmer, wetter, weedier, snakier, and more insect-infested and disease-prone than other regions of the country. It is alluring to the scientifically and poetically minded alike. With Mockingbird Song, Jack Temple Kirby offers a personal and passionate recounting of the centuries-old human-nature relationship in the South. Exhibiting violent cycles of growth, abandonment, dereliction, resettlement, and reconfiguration, this relationship, Kirby suggests, has the sometimes melodious, sometimes cacophonous vocalizations of the region's emblematic avian, the mockingbird.

In a narrative voice marked by the intimacy and enthusiasm of a storyteller, Kirby explores all of the South's peoples and their landscapes—how humans have used, yielded, or manipulated varying environments and how they have treated forests, water, and animals. Citing history, literature, and cinematic portrayals along the way, Kirby also relates how southerners have thought about their part of Earth—as a source of both sustenance and delight.

Customer Reviews:

Mournful melodies.......2006-11-13

Although I have strong disagreements with many of the conclusions of Jack Temple Kirby's 'Mockingbird Song,' and some objections to the approach he uses, it is still a wonderfully engaging and provocative inquiry into what went wrong in the blessed South. It doesn't hurt, either, that Kirby writes with wit and charm.

It is probably impossible to write an ecological history of 'the South.' It is too big and too various. Even Kirby admits its 'irreconcilable varieties.' The book is heavily skewed toward the flat, sandy and swampy coastal plain. The piedmont gets less attention, and the mountains less yet. The transMississippi South almost none.

Second, I have some doubts about using fictional remembrances to bolster what are supposed to be historical arguments; although, at the same time, Kirby is to be applauded for at least mentioning the undeservedly forgotten novelist and storyteller Julia Peterkin.

I have other objections, which will become clear in the summary of the narrative of the book.

This begins with the first people, who conquered the land with fire. This is as good a place as any to show in detail why 'Mockingbird Song' is simultaneously fascinating and infuriating.

The book is mostly, but not entirely, free of PC babble, but on one page Kirby writes how the noble red men 'didn't waste' anything, then a few pages later blandly writes how they exported woodpecker beaks as far as Colorado and Ontario. At the same time, he debunks the timeworn children's story about how Squanto taught the Pilgrims to bury a fish in each corn hill for fertilizer. In a land full of raccoons and similar varmints, that could have guaranteed a ruined garden. Peterkin made the same point in a story she wrote 75 years ago.

The truth is, the Indians disturbed the environment to the extent that their limited technology allowed, as all human groups have at all times -- except one, which we will get to later.

Then Kirby leads us through the European impact, in which the South became a provisioner for a world market. The main initial product was deerskins. The statistics here are problematic. Millions of skins were exported, but the South (and Midwest) ought to have been able to support that level of harvest. Kirby does not discuss why the deer population crashed. Probably it is the indiscriminate taking of does.

Farming, logging and, in some places, mining ravaged the natural South, as did the trampling Eurasian livestock and crowding weeds. Queen Anne's lace, probably the characteristic plant of the southern summer, is an import.

Unlike Donald Edward Davis in his more geographically limited 'Where There Are Mountains,' Kirby makes little of the blight that eliminated the chestnut from the southern mountains. It is surprising, though, that when Kirby gets to industrial pollution, he does not use the example of the copper smelter at Ducktown, Tenn. Davis also underplays this, still the most graphic instance of industrial pollution anywhere in the South. Miles and miles of east Tennessee were denuded of even a single green leaf. This was the real acid rain.

Ecological change becomes complexly intertwined with slavery and plantation agriculture, and this section of the book was, to me, the most interesting. Kirby contends that rural southerners treated the land as a commons. It was not, as in Europe, legally so. All the real property was assigned to someone. Kirby does not make this distinction, which I think an important one.

For Kirby, the signature tree loss was not the chestnut or the cypress but the longleaf pine, eliminated by the turpentiners and kept from recovering by the pulp industry.

In this long section, he brings in the importance of hunting, but in a strange way. There are pages and pages about hunting devil fish (manta rays), although the number of devil fish hunters can be counted on the thumbs of two hands. Not a line about coons, little about dogs, little about horses, nothing about quarterhorses.

To me, the characteristic animal of the South is the chigger. Chiggers are absent, too.

The discussion of the closure of the free range and the criminalization of forest arson -- which had been practiced by everybody -- threw new light on those topics for me.

As he gets closer to the present day, Kirby's sharpest ire is reserved for suburbia, green lawns and sprawl. It is hard to worry about sprawl in an area with as much acreage as Europe and only one fourth as many people. And since arable peaked in 1860 in the South, there's no economic demand for the land to be used for anything else.

Here is where we meet the one group of people in history who do not alter the environment as much as they can: Once people become rich enough and secure enough in their food supply to afford it, they can establish nature reserves. Kirby seems ambivalent about these, and would have preferred, apparently, that the South had evolved as a land of small farms.

He cites the North Carolina tenant farmer's daughter, Linda Flowers, who in her memoir, 'Throwed Away,' writes of the displacement of the Southern small farmer. Actually, most small farmers couldn't wait to give up what Hank Williams memorably described as resurveying the same 40 acres again and again over the hindquarters of a mule. Flowers herself could have continued to farm if she had been willing to exist on the $15 a week her parents made; but, unsurprisingly, she preferred to work as a college teacher. (See my extended discussion of eastern N.C. tenantry in my Amazon review of 'Throwed Away.')

Kirby cites an instance of genuine environmental disaster in the South that, to me, illustrates just what is wrong with his and Flowers' regrets. When a horridly poisonous dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria piscicida, broke out in eastern waters, the identification was made by a woman aquatic biologist at North Carolina State University. As recently as 1962, there were no women (and no black people, either) at State, as students or teachers. If the commons and the old lifeways had to be extinguished to bring this about, then they were well lost.

Kirby, in one of his thought-provoking excursions, talks about the significance of bricks and observes that in the dying era of premodern agriculture in the South, some working class people managed to live in brick houses, including in eastern North Carolina. So they did, although the Flowers family was not among them; and in northwest Georgia, the schoolhouses were built of solid marble. But I am a Southerner, too, though I no longer live there, and the characteristic houses I remember were tarpaper shacks with backhouses. The comfortably middle class, as Kirby came from, may regret the changes in the 21st century South. Most Southerners embrace them.

Although Kirby's outlook on change is disagreeable to me, his writings are valuable and deserve attention from anyone interested in the past and future of the South. After finishing 'Mockingbird Song,' I immediately ordered his earlier books 'Poquosin' and 'Rural Worlds Lost.'

Lastly, Kirby and I both love the South, and I agree completely that 'Barbecue . . . is as much as anything the unifying substance of that pesky abstraction, the South.' But we disagree on what barbecue is. Kirby is a Virginian and partial to North Carolina barbecue, seasoned only with vinegar; while I am a Tennesseean and partial to a sauce of molasses, tomatoes and spices. It's no wonder our interpretations of the South are so different.

Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

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My favorite book about the Dust Bowl
Some interesting history and ideas in a very dry context
BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPE, UGLY ECONOMICS
Book Review: "Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s"
Comprehensive, but a bit dry

Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
Donald Worster
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195174887

Book Description

In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.

Customer Reviews:

My favorite book about the Dust Bowl.......2007-10-16

Looking at the cover, this book seems as if it's going to be something really academic--and it is scholarly and knowledgeable--and it's never academic in the bad sense, in the boring sense.
I read this right after reading Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time," and found this book's descriptions of the devastation caused by the 1930s Dust Bowl to be much more vivid and gripping, this book's facts to be much quirkier and more interesting, and this book's scope to feel much broader and more widely felt. With "The Worst Hard Time," I got the idea that the whole thing really only affected a handful of counties, which I knew was wrong, but with this book there was no denying just how epic the whole ordeal was.
I loved this book (despite its author's amusing tendency to quote Marx) and consider it to be perhaps the very best book I've read about the Dust Bowl--and I've read a few of them.

Some interesting history and ideas in a very dry context.......2007-04-13

In the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930's, the Great Plains states faced the additional hardship of one of the worst environmental disasters commonly known as the Dust Bowl. Traditionally grassland, the area was not well-suited to the kind of extensive farming that preceeded those years. And once the natural grass which held the soil together was gone and the regular cycle of drought hit, there was nothing to stop the wind from blowing it across the land or into huge dust storms that raged for weeks on end. History usually focuses only on the social and economic effects of the Dust Bowl, but Worster adds the environment into the mix and seeks to find the root cause of this man-made disaster. He opens with a quote from Karl Marx, and although he dismisses that in his newly added Afterword as mere bravado, it seems apparent throughout his writting that he's a Marxist in his beliefs. He places the blame on American culture and Capitalism - not on the people, but the culture that encourages and drives them to create bigger farms and use machinery that more effectively tills the land. He argues that inherent to American culture is this behavior of exploiting the land for profit and only through government intervention and control can we avoid this kind of disaster in the future.

I can agree that the greed of Capitalism is laid bare in this disaster and that the land is probably not suitable to the kind of exessive use that happens there. But I'm not convinced that his Socialist suggestions (which unfortunately are not offered in a very concise or summarized way) are the answer. He seems to dismiss and ignore the inherent problems in Socialism and it's failure to provide for the people under it's rule. Capitalism may not be perfect, but it taps into mankind's natural desire to better one's position through individual efforts, while Socialism in theory recognizes the brotherhood of mankind but fails to provide for even the basic needs of the people (even the author recognizes it is this Capitalist economy that provides food for most of the world). And his suggestions for population control or that the people in that area should go back to bare subsistence farming seems far-fetched. But at least the author is exploring new ideas (or probably just regurgitating old ones from the 60's and 70's), and for that I give him credit.

But while I found many aspects of the book interesting and insightful, overall it's pretty dry reading (pun intended). The statistics become a bit boring and make the book feel excessively academic. The lectures against the evils of American culture were tiresome, and I felt he had a very condescending attitude when discussing the people affected. And I would have enjoyed a better discussion on the natural ecology of the land and it's native plants and animals, which I think would have been more inspiring. But on a personal aside, the one thing that made me realize how boring the book was becoming for me was when I kept losing my place (I'd forget to put the bookmark back where I left off). But when I picked it up again I would read for several pages before I realized that wasn't actually where I left off before. It was like it didn't matter where I read - it all kinda flowed together.

BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPE, UGLY ECONOMICS.......2006-06-25

In the mid thirties, drought and land mismanagement created huge dust storms over the plains known as 'black blizzards'. Worster tells us something about them in the first chapter, but reserves most of his ink describing the economic and social conditions that allowed the disaster to happen. I disagree fully with his arguments, and also think he spent too much time on Oklahoma and Kansas. The storms affected a much wider area than just Cimmaron county.

Worster is a Marxist who is upset that we have used our land in this country to produce so much. He sees the creation of wealth as an evil to be controlled, if not eliminated. Our disregard for ecology created the dust bowl, he says, and will likely bring another in the future. Certainly he is right that some destructive farming practices made the drought situation worse. But are we not the most productive agricultural nation on earth? Clearly our capitalist system has proved its worth, on the farm as elsewhere. In the 70's, another drought period, we even fed the Russians, who were operating under a socialist, marxist inspired economy. Worster seems to yearn for a simpler time, a time when all was not caught up in the rat race. I believe we can all understand and even sympathize with this. But it is no excuse for lousy economics.

Book Review: "Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s" .......2006-04-10

In "Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s" (Oxford University Press: New York, 1979) Donald Worster contends that the destruction of the southern plains was one of the most terrible ecological disasters in human history. Human beings, not nature, heaven, or hell, created this ecological tragedy. It was the result of unbridled greed and arrogance on the part of expansion driven Americans and their erroneous assumptions about soil, plants, and rain. According to Worster, the dust bowl happened because "the system" worked, not because it failed. Farmers of the Great Plains were a varied group, they were not merely families that worked the land and grew crops. They were individuals and corporations who, because of greed and an unyielding attitude, set out to break the land and force it to provide the lifestyle they chose. They were successful in their first goal; they did indeed break the land. The overwhelming failure and huge cost of the second goal are the main topics of the book, Dust Bowl.
The dust bowl was one of "the three worst ecological blunders in history" (4). The other two were the deforestation of China 's uplands circa 3000 BC, and the destruction of Mediterranean vegetation by livestock. China 's deforestation produced centuries of silting and flooding. The ruin of Mediterranean flora left once fertile lands eroded and impoverished. However, the big difference between the dust bowl and the other disasters is that the dust bowl took only fifty years to achieve (4). Robert Geiger, an associated press reporter from Denver , coined the term "dust bowl" after traveling "through the worst-hit part of the plains" (28). The irony of the label `dust bowl' is that while some thought the term was a satire on college football ("orange bowl", "rose bowl") Geiger was not referring to sports at all. He was not even referring to the ubiquitous sugar bowl. Geiger was recalling "the image of the plains pushed forth by another Denver man William Gilpin" who in the 1850s thought the continent itself was a "great fertile bowl rimmed by mountains, its concave interior destined to one day be the seat of civilization" (28).
Drought was a major contributing factor to the dust bowl. Worster defines "drought" as a relative term dependent on one's concept of "normal." Climatologists of the dust bowl era defined drought as precipitation deficiencies "of at least 15 percent of the historical mean" (11). The difference between "earth" and "dust" is that dirt is considered earth when it is in place growing food and offering humans a place on which to stand or build (12). Dust is when that same dirt is loose and becomes airborne (12-13). In the 1930s, once that dirt hit the air people in the dust bowl were on the look out for "black blizzards" and "sand blows." Black blizzards were dust storms, or "dusters," that rose off of the plains like a "long wall of muddy water as high as 7000 or 8000 feet" (14-15). These dusters were caused by a "polar continental air mass" that lifted the dirt high off the ground. Sometimes the black blizzards were attended by thunder and lightening storms, or worse an "eerie silence" (14). Sand blows were dust storms that were created by "low sirocco-like winds" that came from the southwest and caused sandy soils to form sand dunes (15).
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck situated the Joad family in Sallisaw Oklahoma , on the Arkansas border about 400 miles east of Guymon and the panhandle dust center. The Joads had been evicted from their farm in what Steinbeck presumed to be the Oklahoma dust bowl. (In reality, that region of Oklahoma was not part of the actual dust bowl). It was greedy wheat farmers and suitcase farmers with combines and tractors that drove out people like the Joads (57). The homeless Joads migrated down Route 66 to California where they were abused and misused by a brutal agricultural system that exploited migrant workers. In some ways Steinbeck's novel confirms discoveries made by Paul Taylor and Carey McWilliams when they investigated the origins of the many displaced agricultural workers who arrived in California . Taylor's and McWilliams' research dovetails with Steinbeck's novel. In California there was no longer a working bond between the farmer and the land. The agriculture there was based on business, crops were a product to sell. By their own statements people in the agriculture business in California were not farmers, they were land companies. What surprised Taylor and McWilliams was that industrial farming was not taking place only in California , "it was spreading rapidly across the "flat midsections of the country as well" (57). "Migrants were fleeing not only drought, but the machine as well" (57). Ultimately, the Joads were displaced by avarice as much as they were by dirt and machines (56-63).
John Wesley Powell's plan for the Great Plains settlement was far different from the one that was eventually put into effect. Powell insisted that there was not enough rainfall for traditional farming in the region past the 100th meridian. He opposed the plan there for 160-acre homesteads. In Powell's report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States (1878), he proposed dividing the plains into 2,560-acre sections used for livestock. This provided homestead opportunities for only 1/16th as many families, and the proposal was soundly rejected by Congress (85-86). When Powel surveyed the area it was still "Indian country". The last "Indian culture" to evolve in the United States was known as the Plains Indians, and they came to symbolize all Indian cultures. En route to the Rio Grande Valley , Coronado came across the nomadic "Querecho" (Apaches). They had no riches and no towns. However two-hundred years later the "birth of the Plains Indians culture"..."came to symbolize for the entire world the aboriginal man" (76). It was the last culture to evolve. Around 1700 AD the Comanche appeared on the plains, stealing horses and taking over the buffalo hunting grounds. Later the Kiowas and the Sioux, and the Cheyenne and the Arapahos arrived on the Plains. These Indians came to symbolize all Indians because their migration had been difficult, they were warriors at heart, and Americans admired their rebel ways. The Plains Indians were admired also because they did not destroy nature. Worster says accusations of burning and over-hunting by the Plains Indians are "wild claims" and gives them no credence (77). The Plains Indians were successful in adapting to nature and not wasting resources. Sadly, by 1876 the Plains Indians had been completely conquered by the army (78).
The three mechanical innovations that caused the great plow-up were the tractor, the disk plow, and the combine. The tractor, especially the Reeves steam tractor, was transforming the plains as early as 1900 (90). The one-way disk plow, using concave plates set vertically on a beam left a "finely pulverized surface layer" and was commonly blamed for dust storms (91). Another innovation was the combined harvester-thresher a.k.a. the "combine." Wheat, in particular, lent itself to this type of farming. By the end of the twenties more than three-fourths of the farmers in the winter wheat section of the Plains owned a combine (91). "Essentially the great plow-up was the work of a generation of aggressive entrepreneurs, imbued with the values and world view of American agricultural capitalism" (214). The practice of utilizing combines and owning tracts of lands that were distant from one's home led absentee growers to be called "suitcase farmers" (93). Mechanized farming allowed speculators in the market to farm areas distant from where they lived. They tended their land a few weeks a year, at planting and harvesting time. These suitcase farmers were part of the greedy capitalist mentality that caused the dust bowl to begin with (152).
Russian thistles are commonly known as "tumbleweeds." This icon of the American West is originally from Europe . Russian thistles spread in the absence of climax soil, that is, they spread rapidly into bare soils (200). According to David B. Williams, a freelance natural history writer and author of A Naturalist's Guide to Canyon Country Canadian farmers tried to use young tumbleweeds as hay and silage for livestock in the 1930s. Mature tumbleweeds do not have many viable uses for humans or cattle, but they have been a poetic inspiration. Happy-go-lucky cowboys called themselves tumbleweeds because they roamed around the West unfettered. William S. Hart called his last film Tumbleweeds, Bob Nolan wrote a song titled "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds," and Tom K. Ryan created a comic strip named "Tumbleweed."
New Deal conservation was different from Progressive era conservation. The colorful characters of Progressive era conservation were Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt. The history of the Progressives is one of natural reserves and government bureaucracies. The Progressives created the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the National Park Service. Struggles between utilitarians and preservationists (particularly the battle waged by Muir against Pinchot and his supporters over Hetch Hetchy) marked Progressive era conservation. New Deal conservation was "more questioning and more radical than that of the Progressives" (185). Progressives wanted to hold back lands from interests that would strip trees and minerals from the land and then move on to find other areas to exploit. The New Dealers of the 1930s saw a need for "agricultural conservation" but their sites were set on safeguarding privately owned land. New Deal conservationists were land-use planners. They viewed natural resource management as requiring long-term planning that included the needs of society combined with wise management of the environment. Unfortunately, preserving natural resources such as parks was submerged by ideas of the greater good achieved by building dams and reclaiming desert lands for farming. The idea was that resource management would provide flood control and aid dust bowl farmers by irrigating their lands. Populations on the Great Plains disadvantaged by the environmental and economic disasters of the 1930s embraced the idea of being saved by the New Deal conservationists (185-187).
The Future of the Great Plains , commissioned by President Roosevelt, made it clear that "inappropriate institutions and practices brought from humid part of the country" caused the dust bowl. Roosevelt instructed the committee not to delve into any broader economic analysis or recommendations such as resettlement outside the plains (193). Therefore, even though administrators had an opportunity to implement land-use planning and production limits, they did not. One reason long-term planning did not occur was that the men in charge, specifically Lewis Gray and Rexford Tugwell, were not daring and courageous conservationists. Instead, they were government workers and "problem-solvers" weighed down with the difficulties people faced due to the Depression (194-196). Even if men like Gray and Tugwell had the time or inclination to promote conservation, they faced a nation that "was not ready to hear about or support fundamental environmental reform" (196). Hugh Hammond Bennett, of the Soil Conservation Service, and the son of a North Carolina cotton planter was an expert in soils and agronomy. He worked to correct the misconception that soil was an inexhaustible resource. He acted in favor of soil conservation, and anticipated the theory of sheet erosion of soils. He worked out national programs for soil and water conservation and was one of the most listened-to soil alarmists that testified in front of Congress (212-213).
The significance of deep-well irrigation is that people in the agricultural business began using lands for crops in areas that would never have a renewable water source. The plains farmers and residents thought that water was the solution to their problems. Deep-well irrigation was one of the many ideas they had for irrigating the plains. They figured about 5000 of these wells at a cost of 1.75 million would do the trick (39). With the advent of advanced technology, deep-well irrigation pumped water out of the aquifers of the Great Plains . When engineers first began pumping out the water from reservoirs deep underground the supply was thought to be inexhaustible. By the time Worster wrote Dust Bowl the end was already in sight for aquifers such as the Ogallala. The Ogallala aquifer is the one that has allowed Haskell Kansas to support agriculture in places nature never intended crops to exist (234-235).

Comprehensive, but a bit dry.......2006-03-20

I had to read this book for my American history class. It is a very comprehensive and insightful book about the Dust Bowl, but in not the usual historical way. It looks deeply into the environmental roots of the Dust Bowl and has some great photographs, both ecological and social. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who i s into environmental history. (But I'm not really, so it might be a bit dry and boring for those who aren't.)

Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780-1880 (Environmental History and the American South)

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Key to understanding the southern conservation movement

Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780-1880 (Environmental History and the American South)
Lynn A. Nelson
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
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Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0820326275

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Pharsalia, a plantation located in piedmont Virginia at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is one of the best-documented sites of its kind. Drawing on the exceptionally rich trove of papers left behind by the Massie family, Pharsalia's owners, this case study demonstrates how white southern planters paradoxically relied on capitalistic methods even as they pursued an ideal of agrarian independence. Lynn A. Nelson also shows how the contradictions between these ends and means would later manifest themselves in the southern conservation movement.

Nelson follows the fortunes of Pharsalia's owners, telling how Virginia's traditional extensive agriculture contributed to the soil's erosion and exhaustion. Subsequent attempts to balance independence and sustainability through a complex system of crop rotation and resource recycling ultimately gave way to an intensive, slave-based form of agricultural capitalism.

Pharsalia could not support the Massies' aristocratic ambitions, and it was eventually parceled up and sold off by family members. The farm's story embodies several fundamentals of modern U.S. environmental thought. Southerners' nineteenth-century quest for financial and ecological independence provided the background for conservationists' attempts to save family farming. At the same time, farmers' failure to achieve independence while maximizing profits and crop yields drove them to seek government aid and regulation. These became some of the hallmarks of conservation efforts in the New Deal and beyond.

Customer Reviews:

Key to understanding the southern conservation movement.......2007-04-11

Pharsalia is a plantation located in piedmont Virginia - one of the best-documented sites of its kind thanks to papers and records left by the Massie family owners. These enable PHARSALIA to be presented here as a case study of how white southern plantation owners employed capitalistic methods to cement their ideas of independence. Any college-level holding strong in Southern history or regional environmental history will find PHARSALIA key to understanding the southern conservation movement as it follows its owners' agricultural pursuits and environmental assessments.

Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest

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Superb book on several fronts...
complete book about longleaf pines
Best book on longleaf yet.
America's Rain Forest

Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest
Lawrence S. Earley
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0807828866

Book Description

Covering 92 million acres from Virginia to Texas, the longleaf pine ecosystem was, in its prime, one of the most extensive and biologically diverse ecosystems in North America. Today these magnificent forests have declined to a fraction of their original extent, threatening such species as the gopher tortoise, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and the Venus fly-trap. Conservationists have proclaimed longleaf restoration a major goal, but has it come too late?

In Looking for Longleaf, Lawrence S. Earley explores the history of these forests and the astonishing biodiversity of the longleaf ecosystem, drawing on extensive research and telling the story through first-person travel accounts and interviews with foresters, ecologists, biologists, botanists, and landowners. For centuries, these vast grass-covered forests provided pasture for large cattle herds, in addition to serving as the world's greatest source of naval stores. They sustained the exploitative turpentine and lumber industries until nearly all of the virgin longleaf had vanished.

Looking for Longleaf demonstrates how, in the twentieth century, forest managers and ecologists struggled to understand the special demands of longleaf and to halt its overall decline. The compelling story Earley tells here offers hope that with continued human commitment, the longleaf pine might not just survive, but once again thrive.

Customer Reviews:

Superb book on several fronts..........2007-10-16

Earley was trying to write a history of turpentining. What he ended up with was a spectacular essay on the natural history of longleaf pine forests, the human history of the forested south, an essay on conflicting views in forestry, and....oh yes...turpentine!

Reading this as an ecologist, I found everything I wanted with just enough of the human element to flesh it out without boring me. Oddly enough, I suspect those reading this from an anthropological view have the same opinion about the natural history aspect of the book. Earley is that good in weaving his tale.

It flows well, is well organized, and the research and references are stunning. Twenty-three pages of references make me wonder how he ever finished the book. (In his acknowledgements he seems to wonder the same thing himself!)

This book belongs on the shelf of every forester, ecologist, and southern historian. I'm just thankful I stumbled across it on a rainy day in Congaree National Park.

complete book about longleaf pines.......2006-11-19

mr. earley goes deep into everything you could want to know about this native tree species,a cornerstone to both the natural world of the southeastern united states and the economic growth and development of the country as a whole.......he tells all about the past history,present day status,and projected outlook of the longleaf pine tree:it's one-time dominance of the coastal plain landscape,compared to it's present day status;all about the naval stores and timber industries,and their heavy dependence upon it that led to it's near demise and current numbers;and the changes in land management of the longleaf forest and it's various ecosystems,with much insight to the controlled burning philosophy that has gained in popularity during the last 50 years or so.....with photos, including some impressive shots of long-gone virgin growth trees dwarfing the grown men standing among them.

Best book on longleaf yet........2005-09-08

This book is as accurate and detailed as any scholarly paper but is written so well that it is certain to be a classic of literature like Archie Carr's "The Windward Road."

America's Rain Forest.......2004-11-23

For years I have been concerned about the disappearance of the South American Rain Forest. What was shocking from Earley's book is how we had our own expansive Forest with it's own ecosystem and let it disappear before our very eyes without anyone noticing.

It is not only a wonderfully told story of the Longleaf pine but it is a genuine history of how the South's economic development between the time of the settlers and up until today nearly destroyed it's most valuable resource and the ecology that was a part of it.

The only problem with this book was not being able to put it down after I started reading it.

Another Country: Journeying Toward the Cherokee Mountains

Average customer rating:

This book is not meant ....
Have you ever read a book.....
Another Country: Journeying Toward the Cherokee Mountains
Another Country-Journeying Toward The Cherokee Mountains
Forgotten history

Another Country: Journeying Toward the Cherokee Mountains
Christopher Camuto
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Travel | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Mountains | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

Ecotourism | Specialty Travel | Travel | Subjects | Books

Travel with Pets | Specialty Travel | Travel | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0820322377

Customer Reviews:

This book is not meant ...........2006-07-31

to be rushed through while reading it. It is a book meant to be savored, thought-upon and reflected upon. This book is haunting in its thoughts and language as the author travels the backcountry of the Great Smoky Mountains. It is also a book on the re-introduction of the Red Wolf back into its natural habitat. It is also a book that explores the history of the Cherokees, who used to roam over the land and lived off the vast wealth of the forest, mountains and rivers before driven off in the unnatural (or perhaps natural) stem of progress. It is a reflective book meant to be savored over a period of time, as the language of the author is dense, lyrical and very thoughtful. It is a beautiful book. It is a sad book. It is a book meant to capture a time now lost to the mists of time.

I picked this book up while visiting the Great Smoky Mountains last September. Out of the pile of books I bought then, this was the first one I picked up and I put it down after a month since it was too much to read in the midst of a crazy lifestyle. I picked it up again several months later to savor the words and thoughts of this author. Then I put it down again. This last few days, I picked it up since I have a craving to go back to the Mountains and teach my children what has happened in the past and what may happen in the future ~~ and I finished it in two days.

Christopher Camuto is a wonderful naturalist writer and a keen observer. I have only been to the Great Smoky Mountains once and we did your basic touristy things simply because my boys were too young to even hike the regular trails. That doesn't mean that we're not going to eventually because we do want to in the future. We want our children to preserve their heritage, what is left of it. We want them to see the magical wonder of being so close to nature and see the natural beauty of this world. And reading this book helped confirm that "want." Camuto goes back and forth from talking about the Red Wolf program in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Cherokee visions and his own observations while hiking along forgotten trails. They all tie together in a beautiful book that is sure to be treasured.

Need an introduction to Mother Nature and her history? I think you should start with this one. It's an unforgettable journey back through the mists of time.

7-30-06

Have you ever read a book............2005-04-15

Have you ever read a book that you loved reading so much you could not stand to finish? Another Country was such a book for me. I have felt so alone for so long as I have both loved my time in the outdoors and equally mourned the loss of it. Every time I pass a mountain and see the red-dirt scar of a new home perched atop it, every time I see a wooded lot scalped completely clean of all life for a new development, I mourn. Christopher Camuto has helped me feel less alone and helped me more completely appreciate the oft-ignored gift of beauty, variety, and history that the land, the Cherokee, and the wolf give us.

Another Country: Journeying Toward the Cherokee Mountains.......2001-06-27

I've searched for years for just the right book that sums up my feelings for lost wilderness and finally found it with this book. I find Mr. Camuto's contrast with William Bartram's descriptions of the mountains both startling and sad. I've walked these mountains for over 30 years and in just the last 10 have I begun to realize the tragic consequences of overdevelopment and urban sprawl. Mountains and streams once largely clean and pristine now are considered off limits for fishing and drinking and I wonder why we have no love for the complexity of our natural environment. Like a Sand County Almanac, Chris Camuto has begun a modern discussion of the land ethic. An ethic our country, I fear, has so far refused to acknowledge or accept.

Another Country-Journeying Toward The Cherokee Mountains.......2001-01-02

Another Country is a search for the soul of a land almost destroyed. Christopher Camuto writes a powerful narrative describing his exploration of the Cherokee homeland in the appalachians. He seeks communion, a connection he can sense in what is left of the natural landscape and wildness around him. It is as elusive as the dying Cherokee myths, as tangible as the arrowheads and village sites he finds. Camuto refers to the Appalacians as the Cherokee Mountains, their former nomenclature, because it is to the Cherokees they really belong. The rape and exploitation of their land parallels the rape and exploitation of their culture. Camuto's search for a wildness, that now remains only in remnants, is set in counterpoint to the reintroduction of the red wolf into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The most important clan animal of the Cherokee, it is symbolic of the differences between the Cherokee and the early Europeans. One revered its wildness and sought to preserve it. The other despised and killed it. One honored the wolf's home, seeking harmony with the land and its spirits. The other saw something untamed that must be destroyed. The author's journey begins as the wolves are being set free. Like many of the members of this first Canus Rufus release who step beyond their shrinking boundaries, Camuto confronts the vestiges of civilization at almost every turn. Set against continual references to Native-American mythology, and the history of the area, Camuto's book allows the reader to share his insight into the Cherokee view of the world. Unlike many who write about early culture, he does not attempt to steal it as his own. His statement that he is not Cherokee and thus can never totally understand, adds credibility to the objectiveness of his observations. It also demonstrates humbleness of endeavor, a bow of respect to the Cherokee nation. The book is firmly rooted in place as it combines the ethereal with the tangible landscape. Those who cherish wildness and honor those first here, will also treasure this book. In many ways , it is a sad obituary, lamenting that which was, as it examines what is left. The reintroduction of the red wolf represents one small, but hopeful, step in the restoration of that which is lost.

Forgotten history.......2000-10-02

I've hiked and fished the Southern Highlands for years, especially the area in and around the Smoky Mt. National Park. Reading Another Country has shown me this place in a completely new light. He compares these mountains at one point to a palimpsest--a scraped-over parchment on which old texts leave faint traces. This book records Camuto's efforts to track these traces, which of course are quickly vanishing if not already gone. By giving these mountains back their ancient names, by telling stories the Cherokee told their children about their homeland, by delving into the natural and human history of the places he walks, by honoring the memories of the ones who are gone, and by contextualizing the beleaguered efforts to bring the red wolf back to its former ground, Camuto opens up layer upon layer of meaning for us who seek out the last wild places without always knowing why. An unforgettable book.

Wildlife, Wildflowers, and Wild Activities: Exploring Southern Appalachia

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Wildlife, Wildflowers, and Wild Activities: Exploring Southern Appalachia
Jennifer Bauer
Manufacturer: Overmountain Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Science, Nature & How It Works | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Travel with Pets | Specialty Travel | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1570723176

Book Description

The outdoors come to life in this collection of stories, games, crafts, investigations, and hands-on activities meant to accompany excursions into the fields, forests, and wetlands of southern Appalachia. The region’s rich natural diversity is highlighted, from its low-elevation coves to its highland ridges and balds. Because the southern Appalachian Mountains provide diverse habitats for plants and animals, every visit presents a new adventure. With an emphasis on the importance of a good conservation ethic along with suggestions on how to get involved in community conservation efforts, explorers of all ages can learn about topics such as plants, animals, microscopic life, life after dark, and environmental awareness.

Transforming New Orleans & Its Environs: Centuries Of Change (Pittsburgh Hist Urban Environ)

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Transforming New Orleans & Its Environs: Centuries Of Change (Pittsburgh Hist Urban Environ)
Craig Colten
Manufacturer: University of Pittsburgh Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Environmental Science | Earth Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Ecology | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Outdoors & Nature | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Professional | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Science | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 082295740X

Book Description

Human settlement of the Lower Mississippi River Valley—especially in New Orleans, the region’s largest metropolis—has produced profound and dramatic environmental change. From prehistoric midden building to late-twentieth century industrial pollution, Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs traces through history the impact of human activity upon the environment of this fascinating and unpredictable region.

In eleven essays, scholars across disciplines––including anthropology, architecture, history, natural history, and geography––chronicle how societies have worked to transform untamed wetlands and volatile floodplains into a present-day sprawling urban center and industrial complex, and how they have responded to the environmental changes brought about by the disruption of the natural setting.

This new text follows the trials of native and colonial settlers as they struggled to shape the environment to fit the needs of urbanization. It demonstrates how the Mississippi River, while providing great avenues for commerce, transportation, and colonization also presented the region’s greatest threat to urban centers, and details how engineers set about taming the mighty river. Also featured is an analysis of the impact of modern New Orleans upon the surrounding rural parishes and the effect urban pollution has had on the city’s water supply and aquatic life.

The New River Controversy, A New Edition (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies) (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies)

Average customer rating:

Excellent

The New River Controversy, A New Edition (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies) (Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies)
Thomas J. Schoenbaum
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

General | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Water Supply & Land Use | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0786428384
Release Date: 2007-02-22

Product Description

This updated edition of the 1979 original covers the landmark struggle to save the New River from damming in the 1970s. The grassroots movement emphasized the river's cultural and historical value rather than narrow environmental issues and became one of the great victories of the environmental movement. This edition also includes a new epilogue examining the current ecological status of the New River and the ongoing impact of the original conservation efforts in the face of new environmental threats. The 1979 edition won the Weatherford Award presented by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent.......2007-05-12

The New River Controversy is a well-written, insightful and quality reporting at its best. R. Seth Woodard adds a first rate epilogue that demonstrates first hand knowledge of the environmental issues. He is fast becoming an expert in the field with insight to look beyond tomorrow at the future we want for our earth.

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