| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.3

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property Between Them. By Karen R. Merrill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xix + 274 pp. Map, notes, bibliography, index. $50.00

"Git off my land!" These words resonate with an American respect for private property. But public lands are something different. Or are they? Karen Merrill struggles with this question as she analyzes the federal government's ever-tightening grip upon lands of the public domain in the twentieth century. Two principal milestones on this road, the establishment of national forests early in the century and the Taylor Grazing Act during the Great Depression, tried to settle the question of who owns what. On the rangelands, ambiguities about ownership persisted in conflicts over grazing permits: Stock operators argued "rights," government land managers "privilege."

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