| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.1

Book Review

Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. Edited by Shepard Krech, III, J. R. McNeill, and Carolyn Merchant. New York: Routledge, 2004. 3 vols. Illustrations, maps, list of contributors, further reading, index. $495.
The editors of this volume set an ambitious goal for themselves: "This Encyclopedia offers a comprehensive, up-to-date, in-depth, worldwide vision of environmental history, on every scale from local to global" (p. x). In many ways, they realize their ambitions. In others, they fall short. Both the successes and shortcomings provide insight into the state of environmental history.	1
The successes are formidable. As should be the case in an encyclopedia, the editors have pulled together an enormous quantity of information. The numbers give some sense of the scale: 3 volumes, 1,429 pages, 520 entries, 20 maps, 111 photos, and 115 sidebars. The categories of topics range widely, from technology and science to religion, from people to nonliving resources, from exploitation to arts, literature, and architecture, and from energy sources to law and regulation. The editors include a useful overview of major topics in environmental history in their introduction.	2
To test coverage, I brainstormed a list of topics and then compared it with the list of entries. The encyclopedia performed well. The 520 essays include longtime favorite topics for environmental historians, such as conservation, preservation, environmentalism, wilderness, hunting and fishing, ecology, dams, National Park Service, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, Alice Hamilton, Rachel Carson, romanticism, air pollution, water pollution, technology, endangered species, diseases, urbanization, and commodification.	3
Other topics have not played such prominent roles in the field but deserve more attention. Entries on areas outside North America and Europe (still the dominant foci of the field) are good examples. They describe countries in Asia (such as Japan and Philippines), Latin America (such as Brazil and Mexico), and Africa (such as South Africa and Egypt), and Australia and Antarctica. They analyze religions, such as Jainism and Shinto. They include resources, such as manioc, guano, peat, and taro. And they cover natural features, such as the Niger Delta and the Rio de la Plata. Their inclusion speaks highly of the editors' commitment to furthering a global perspective.	4
The essays themselves, written by hundreds of authors, succeed in presenting key ideas clearly and accessibly for a variety of audiences. Many entries cross-reference others, and an index further assists readers in locating topics. Lists of further reading at the end of each essay (typically three to five publications, with more for broader topics) are valuable tools for researchers wanting to pursue topics in depth.	5
A handsome layout shows the encyclopedia's information to advantage. The typeface is a readable size, bold lettering contributes to orienting readers to each page, and white space breaks up what could have been overcrowded pages.	6
This work is so valuable that it should be updated at intervals. The following comments are intended as suggestions for future editions.	7
The Encyclopedia could do more to guide readers through topics. The editors list seventeen general categories of entries in the introduction. In addition to those mentioned in the second paragraph of this review, they include sociocultural resources; biomes, climate, and natural events; economic systems; and eras and civilizations, ancient. All of these groupings are useful and important.	8
Unfortunately, the encyclopedia provides no guidance in pursuing some of these topics. Take "economic systems" as an example. Readers would be well served by an essay titled "economic systems." It could describe major economic systems and their interactions, and then refer readers to more detailed discussions under others entries (such as "capitalism" and "communism"). But no entry appears between "Ecology, Spiritual" and "Ecopsychology." Alternatively, the editors could rely on the index. A number of entries could be listed under the heading "economic systems" or simply "economics." But the index is reticent about economics of any sort. Of "economics" and its variants, the index cites only three appearances in the entire encyclopedia: "economics, ecological" (one mention in the "Schumacher, E. F." entry), "economies" (one mention in the "Waste Management" entry), and The Economist magazine (one mention, as the source of a quotation, in the "Waste Management" entry).	9
The same pattern holds for other general categories, such as "biomes," "energy sources," and "exploitation." Scholars familiar with the field probably will not find the lack of signposting a problem because they already carry around a mental map of general and specific topics, but others less well versed—such as the undergraduates in my environmental history courses, to whom I will be recommending these volumes—might well stumble.	10
The Encyclopedia could do more to follow through on the introduction's claim that "The logic of pursuing environmental history on the global scale is straightforward. Many processes of environmental change unfold without reference to borders or to our usual mental maps" (p. ix). True. But the maps in the Encyclopedia reinforce, rather than challenge, our usual mental maps. The continental maps show only today's national boundaries. We get no sense of boundaries in the past (the extent of Spain's empire is at least as relevant to the environmental history of South America as are today's national borders), much less of topographic features. The maps divide continents in politically potent, but biogeographically flawed, ways. Europe and Asia appear as separate entities, and countries in southwest Asia (Iran, Iraq, Syria) appear not on the Asia map but on a separate map of the Middle East (whose name is ripe for revision, since the area is east of Europe's 800 million people but west of the couple billion people in China and India). A number of individual essays also would benefit from maps.	11
In the introduction, the editors argue that environmental history draws on a number of scientific fields, including ecology, botany, zoology, bacteriology, medicine, geology, physics, and chemistry. Readers would expect entries to elaborate on these highlighted disciplines and their role in the field, but only one of the eight appears as an entry. The Encyclopedia is not alone in asserting a central role for science in an introduction but having little to say about it in the rest of the work. Environmental historians need to do more to demonstrate how science reshapes our understanding of history—or we should drop the claim. (I address this in more depth in a separate essay in this issue.) The one scientific discipline with an entry is ecology, which appears in thirteen variants (such as "ecological imperialism," "ecopsychology," and "ecological simplicity"), each with a separate essay. Ecology will continue to supply nourishing food for environmental historians long into the future, but scholars who look to other branches of the scientific tree will find large, low-lying fruit ripe for the plucking.	12
With luck, future editions will have room for more essays representing the field's broadening concerns in space and time. One geographical candidate, for example, would be an entry on Indonesia. It boasts the world's fourth largest population (234 million people, more than Russia and Germany combined), the sixteenth largest area (1.9 million square kilometers spread over a vast archipelago), enormous forests and other natural resources, and a pivotal role in the history of world trade (as the famed Spice Islands and Dutch East Indies). Temporal candidates would include entries on "ancient," "medieval," "modern," and "postmodern" periods.	13
These suggestions should in no way overshadow the strengths of this major contribution to environmental history. This encyclopedia should become the reference of first resort for students and researchers alike. It belongs in every research library, many reading libraries, and, if the price were not so formidable, individual collections.	14
Edmund Russell is associate professor of science, technology, and society and history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge, 2001), the book review editor for Environmental History, and coeditor, with Richard P. Tucker, of Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War (Oregon State, 2004).

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.