| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 170 words from this article are provided below; about 373 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, 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. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• 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 the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Brian Black. Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom. (Creating the North American Landscape.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2000. Pp. xii, 235. $42.50.

Environmental history in the United States has benefitted in recent years from an increased interest in probing cultural attitudes toward the environment through deconstructing signal features of transformed physical landscapes. Brian Black's study of Pennsylvania's storied Oil Creek during the critical decade of the 1860s fits comfortably within this paradigm. It focuses mostly on a twenty-mile stretch of narrow and winding valley between Oil City and Titusville, largely in Venango County. Using contemporary writings and photographs, it argues that the unusually rapid and chaotic despoilation of the district resulted from the unprecedented nature of oil as an extractable resource, its timeliness in offering alternatives to known sources for illumination and lubrication in an industrializing nation, and the creation and maintenance of myths that fueled and excused a destructive economic boom grounded in a newly valued resource. . . .

There are about 373 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.