| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

An Environmental History of the World: Humankind's Changing Role in the Community of Life. By J. Donald Hughes. New York: Routledge, 2001. xiv + 264 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliographical essay, index. Cloth $80.00, paper $31.95.

Environmental history is no longer a new field, so when one of its tribal elders speaks on a grand subject of his choosing, the occasion merits careful attention. When the elder is J. Donald Hughes aspiring to summarize a lifetime of scholarship, and he takes the whole Earth for his abode, the book merits a close reading. 1

An Environmental History of the World proposes a comprehensive survey from basic principles to the "primal harmonies" of prehistoric times to the crazed confusion of "present and future." Each chapter follows an identical formula: Each begins with a statement of general purpose and setting, then illustrates that era and its developments with three examples, and finishes with a conclusion. Almost all of the sites will be familiar to environmental historians. Only four of them are in the United States—the book is truly global in scope. No single place or event is allowed to dominate. Essays on eighteen sites have been published previously by the author between 1996 and 2000 in the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. . . .

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