Book Review

Canada and the United States

The commonly accepted narrative of the wilderness protection movement in twentieth-century America goes something like this: late in the nineteenth century, after decades of working to tame wilderness, Americans began to appreciate that landscapes devoid of a heavy human footprint were an asset to be preserved from development. Facing a culture that still prioritized economic measures of worth, preservationists fought long and hard to preserve wilderness areas from the growing industrial society that threatened to degrade the few remaining large tracts of undeveloped land. Well, Paul S. Sutter might reply, that is only half right. In this excellent book, Sutter makes a convincing case that the founders of the Wilderness Society feared more than anything one particular aspect of America's consumer culture: the spread of roads into every corner of the nation. And, surprisingly, these leading lights were more often trained foresters with a strong utilitarian streak, not preservationists. In short, Sutter's book forces readers to see the wilderness movement in a new light.

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In the first two chapters, Sutter lays out some of the intellectual background to concepts of wilderness and the context of conservation in the interwar years, especially the New Deal decade. He then proceeds to a chapter for each of four leading founders of the Wilderness Society: Robert Sterling Yard, Aldo Leopold, Benton MacKaye, and Robert Marshall. Each chapter could stand alone as a minibiography and analysis of the evolution of the central character's thinking about wilderness, and together they do a fine job of interweaving the lives and ideas of these four intriguing men. Sutter is not afraid to point out the contradictions in each man's life and limitations in his thought, as well as the conflicts among the four.

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