Book Review

Canada and the United States

This book continues the efforts of environmental historians and cultural geographers to introduce the study of nature into the American experience. John Warfield Simpson strives to give his readers an appreciation of the landscape as it was shaped and manipulated by waves of Americans over a two hundred year period. Simpson looks less at land and more at people. The ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry David Thoreau, William Gilpin, John Wesley Powell, John Muir, Andrew Jackson Downing, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Aldo Leopold all provide entrees to understanding how human attitudes fashioned the American landscape. From the beginnings of the Republic to the continuing spread of suburbia, each generation has left its mark, depending on the values embraced and the technology available. Simpson believes that with the demise of the railroads and the introduction of the automobile, Americans concluded that the best of all places to live was the "Olmstedian" suburbia, "a middle ground, nestled safely between city and wilderness" (p. 313).

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The American record with regard to landscape is not inspiring. According to Simpson, our forefathers were too wedded to private property concepts and the view that land is only a commodity. Seldom, it would seem, did Americans follow the example and ideas of Thoreau, Muir, or Leopold. Most followed their economic interests, brushing aside any aesthetic thoughts of landscape as earthly paradise to pursue profit from a seemingly endless resource. To tell this complex story is a huge task, and the author should be commended for his effort to make land policy and landscape evolution palatable to the general reader. Simpson's writing is seldom elegant, and yet it is often warm and thoughtful, enhanced by personal experiences. The book should reach a large audience.

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