| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to Enviromental History online. About 282 words from this article are provided below; about 528 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, 13.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

What Is Environmental History? By J. Donald Hughes. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006. 180 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. Paper $19.95.
Donald Hughes, a senior environmental historian and founding member of the American Society for Environmental History, has authored many studies in world environmental history, including important works that have been translated into Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Japanese, and Korean. Hughes has attempted to distill his deep knowledge of environmental history into a short book defining the scope of the field. Writing such a book poses challenges that many historians never encounter. In attempting to meet the challenge, Professor Hughes provides readers with a journey through environmental history's ancient and medieval origins as well as its modern texts. I found especially suggestive his comprehensive chapters dealing with "Issues and Directions in Environmental History" (chapter 6) and "Thoughts on Doing Environmental History" (chapter 7).	1
Hughes's other chapters are limited in the extent to which they help answer his question concerning the meaning of environmental history. By definition, a discipline requires a theoretical structure and a proof process. All sciences, including the natural, social, and behavioral sciences, not only pass this test but they have over time discarded dated paradigms catapulting the discipline into new modes of inquiry. Within the lifespan of most readers of this journal, the theory of the Big Bang has transformed physics, while plate tectonics has done the same for geology. Closer to environmental history, ecology's theory of interdependencies guides its research agenda. As a discipline, history possesses no defining paradigm, and attempts to provide one have led historians including R.G. Collingwood in The Idea of History (Oxford, 1945) to conclude that history is interpretation.	. . .

There are about 528 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.