| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to Enviromental History online. About 254 words from this article are provided below; about 507 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to Environmental History, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Environmental History, you can:: • get subscription information here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of Environmental History (8.1-present).
Instititutions can:: • get subscription information here to receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings. By David E. Nye. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. x + 371 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.
David Nye's engaging America as Second Creation is a wonderful book, broad in scope, rich in detail, superb in analytical verve. The jacket blurbs suggest that Second Creation "reworks" Leo Marx's Machine in the Garden. David Nye goes beyond Marx's path-breaking study to consider the way in which not only literary works but political treatises, economic analyses, and such artistic endeavors as woodcuts and landscape art were commentary on the place of technology in America. He interweaves in his historical discussion of foundation narratives of such artifacts as the ax, log cabin, mill, and railroad prescient observations about the contemporary costs of establishing control over nature.	1
Nye's book is organized around several themes: assimilation of nature, the mastery of space, the mastery of power, and the transformation of unproductive land (desert) into gardens. For each theme, Nye discusses the place of a technology, e. g., the ax, in nature and society, including aspects of class conflict and conflict between indigenous peoples and settlers. The ax was the first technology of the second creation. Americans did not see their axes as tools of conquest. Rather, in foundation stories the Native Americans were the aggressors, and were marginalized in the stories. Other iron technologies (sickles, scythes, cooking vessels, wedges, saws, and drills), draught animals (horses and oxen) and European seeds contributed to conquest.	. . .

There are about 507 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.