| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 9.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm. By Thomas J. Campanella. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. xii + 228 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $38.00.
John Muir famously quipped that when you "Tug on anything at all ... you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe." Undoubtedly Muir had the natural world in mind, but in this intriguing book, Thomas J. Campanella demonstrates that Muir's dictum also applies to nature-culture connections. At every turn, Republic of Shade reveals yet another compelling interaction between Ulmus americana and New Englanders. Some connections are old chestnuts—the Romantics' infatuation with nature as God's handiwork. Others are novel—elms that survived the colonial land-clearing era later became "old Titans" to compete with Europe's antiquities. Still others are surprising (you will have to read the book).	1
Republic of Shade is neither an ecological nor policy history, although these concerns are addressed. Rather it is a wide-ranging, cultural examination of the slow rise, rapid decline, and possible resurrection of the American elm in the American landscape. In a brief introduction, Campanella argues that the American elm deserves attention because "no tree loomed larger in American history" (p. 5). It is the tree of the American Dream, and like the other material elements of that dream, the village townscape and home, it moved west from the Northeast, bringing an identifiable rhythm to much of the American landscape.	. . .

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