| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Draining the Great Oasis: An Environmental History of Murray County, Minnesota. Edited by Anthony J. Amato, Janet Timmerman, and Joseph A. Amato. Marshall, Minn.: Crossings Press. 2001. xix + 232 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, notes, bibliography. Cloth $25.00, paper $15.00.
Draining the Great Oasis is a pleasure to read for anyone interested in the environmental history of the tall grass prairie of Murray County, Minnesota. The book consists of twenty short essays (chapters), with sixteen different contributors coming from a variety of occupations in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities—all of whom clearly have vast local expertise of Murray County. Anthony J. Amato, Janet Timmerman, and Joseph A. Amato skillfully edited the short essays so that they mesh together very well, making them clearly readable to a diverse interdisciplinary audience.	1
The first ten chapters focus on describing the natural environment of Murray County over the past two centuries, emphasizing broad aspects of the environmental landscape, crops, geology, soil, wetlands, mammals, birds, and prairie. A few chapters also specifically describe Lake Shetek and the prairie wetlands at smaller geographic scales.	2
Historical emphasis provides the continuity that binds the different chapters together, as several chapters describe similar historical aspects but in different views, such as assessing the historical significance of the Nicollet Expedition on initial land transformation and settlement. Environmental transformation of wetlands (e.g., the muck) from human activity is a central theme—corresponding to popular historical environmental ideas of emphasizing human triumph as well as environmental destruction over nature.	. . .

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