Book Review

With only a couple of exceptions, the subfield of urban environmental history suffers from a dearth of comprehensive surveys of individual cities. One is much more likely to come across detailed accounts of infrastructure development, disease epidemics, and the like. On the Border, edited by the prolific Char Miller, begins to address this imbalance by providing a range of perspectives on the environmental history of San Antonio. In doing so, the book also shifts our attention a bit from cities of the northeast and midwest to the southwest. This introduces a number of different issues into the narrative of urban environmental transformation, although there are still a good many common themes.	1
The first essay in the collection establishes a foundation for the other contributions by providing a detailed but jargon-laden overview of the geology and climate of the region. Jesus de la Teja follows this with a discussion of Spanish observations of and interactions with the Texas landscape. In an essay demonstrating the influence of William Cronon, Char Miller then engages the agricultural and industrial history of San Antonio and its environs after the Mexican-American War, paying close attention to the city's central role in sustaining economic activity on the Gulf Coastal Plains and Edwards Plateau. Another piece investigates the environmental impact of military bases in the local area.	2
Of course, no environmental history of San Antonio would be complete without something being said about water, and three essays specifically address this topic. Among them, Laura Wimberly's contribution examines the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 and the efforts of Representative Henry Gonzalez to win special protection for "sole source aquifers," like the Edwards Aquifer below San Antonio. The next and last section of the book includes essays by Lewis Fisher and John Hutton on historic preservation, one focusing on protection of the Alamo and the other concerned with the forces shaping landscape architecture in San Antonio. These are followed by Miller's concluding remarks.	3
As a whole, the essays in On the Border are well-grounded by the authors' commitment to a common subject, and they provide a broad but focused overview of San Antonio's environmental history. The most significant oversight in this respect, however, is the lack of a full-length piece on pre- and post-contact indigenous land use. Another problem with the book is the tendency of some authors to stray outside the admittedly fuzzy boundaries of environmental history. Some essays conflate the field with the history of physical space, others expand its definition to make it almost meaningless, and in a couple of instances contributions demonstrate little sense of historians' concern with change and continuity over time. Although valuable and worthy in many ways, this book should be read with the expectation that, like most edited collections, the individual pieces vary in quality and significance.	4
Reviewed by Chad Montrie, assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His book, To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia, was published recently by the University of North Carolina Press.

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