Book Review

This anthology of documents, along with extensive headnotes, has an ambitious purpose—indeed, more than one. The title's first words signal the first focus, confirmed in the introduction as a "narrative on the relationship between the American state and nature [that] begins in the late eighteenth century" (p. 5). The Table of Contents confirms this scope, as the documents run from James Madison through Al Gore, an inquiry stretching across our entire national history. The reader is already impressed that the combination of complex topic and vast narrative reach makes this a daunting but potentially important effort. Take a deep breath, and begin this book when well rested.	1
But there is to be more. "Voices Heard" are those of the men who ran the State and also dominated the history of the environmental movement both in ideas and politics, along with the few women who broke into that circle of power. Thus we find selections from Madison, Jefferson, de Tocqueville, Olmsted, Marsh, Powell, TR, Pinchot, Muir, FDR, Hamilton (Alice), Douglas (Marjory Stoneman), Leopold, Carson, Ehrlich, Wilson, Gore, and others. Some are people of ideas, some people of political action (a few are both), and the book's editorial headnotes must shoulder the central aim of the volume, to "relate intellectual thought to political action" (p. 1). And "Voices Unheard"? Here the volume takes aim at another goal, to pay attention to and weave into the story the "unheard" or at least marginalized voices, who gradually achieved "a widening of the debate." Thus along the way there are selections from (Frederick) Douglass, Chief Seattle, Chavez, Deloria, and Bullard.	2
Ambitious scope squared. Kudos to the editors for taking aim at such a large set of topics, the history of the American State and then the history of American environmental thought and political action so that their relationship is illuminated, while at the same time weaving into this immense story the marginalized voices of ethno-racial minorities.	3
This volume will not satisfy the scholar. These immense tasks are not achieved at the level that scholars expect. That is the core of my review of a book they did not write.	4
But the editors deserve a review of this book that they did write, or compile. The volume was clearly not fashioned, at least primarily, for the scholarly audience, though it might be found to contain many suggestions for that readership. Instead, the book seems classroom aimed. A series of "discussion questions" at the end of each section are provided in order to "provoke instructor and student discussions about the link between contemporary issues and the evolution of political and intellectual approaches to the state and nature" (p. 4). Is it a success? One would have to teach from it to come to a judgment. I hope that my review indicates the great range and variety of sources presented here, along with ample introductory materials. As a teacher I have doubts, but many will be attracted to their audacity.	5
There is yet another goal imbedded in this project, a political one. In contemporary America, "frustration is endemic" because of "how extremely difficult it is to get anything done" in "the current political situation" (p. 2). What is the problem? "America, since the New Deal of the 1930s, has witnessed an explosion in interest group formation ... the explosion of special interests. ... What many people think is needed at this juncture is a political movement, and strong leadership, to break what scholar James MacGregor Burns called in 1963 'the deadlock of democracy'" (p. 2). So another of the book's several aims is to document the need for a resurgence of 1930s–1960s liberalism. Whether this aim is achieved a reviewer can only judge in her own terms, and then readers in turn. The book allows Ronald Reagan and Dixie Lee Ray to confront Robert Bullard and Al Gore, and so the documents are even-handed if the editors, in their own comments, are candidly not.	6
For teachers and their students, if not for scholars, this book offers a remarkably ambitious tour of a nation-spanning, vast encounter between power and the impulses for environmental protection. I cannot judge how well it will perform in that role, but that is where its potential lies, unless limited by the list price of $41.	7
Otis L. Graham, Jr., is professor of history, emeritus, at University of California, Santa Barbara.

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.