Book Review

This substantial and impressive study of the Chicago region depicts its natural history in the context of "The Great Forces" that shaped it: glaciation, soil formation, climate, weather, fire, and human use of natural resources. Within this framework the author develops fourteen chapters, each relating in detail to specific kinds of plant and animal life and to the region's soils, topography, and water resources. These include the prairies, shrublands and savannas, forests, wetlands, Lake Michigan with its beaches, dunes, and bluffs, the region's rivers and small lakes, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. The author brings the story well into the 1990s and ends with a consideration of "Prospects for the Future."	1
Greenberg undertook the study hoping to increase "understanding of local ecosystems and their history" and to promote appreciation for the natural history of a nineteen-county area spanning Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. He has succeeded. His method was to establish what the natural area was like at the time of settlement and how its plants, animals, waters, and landscape in general have changed over time, emphasizing natural complexities in the hope of making people more aware "that there is much we still don't know and that for every action that we take (or do not take) there are a host of 'side effects'" (p.xiv).	2
Given the magnitude and natural diversity of the area he proceeded selectively, using such major criteria as adaptability to change or lack thereof and human impact in many varied forms. Scientific information receives far greater emphasis than does the subject of human interaction with the nonhuman natural world. This complex history has three major components that identify the status of the natural subject at the time of European settlement, relate how and why it changed in response to human developmental activity, and trace efforts to protect, conserve, and/or rehabilitate it.	3
Drawing upon an extensive literature relating to the region's natural history, Greenberg presents a most impressive interpretive synthesis designed for the general reader. Those interested in the natural world will find it a font of information written with a fine sense for the ironic, dramatic, and humorous. The treatments of prairies, wetlands, and birdlife are especially well done. The account of the work of naturalists, conservation advocates, and environmentalists to save as much of the original as possible is an especially noteworthy contribution which broadens the current understanding of environmentalism at the local level. A number of historians hope for a time when many more similar accounts will bring local environmentalism into clearer focus, giving a broader perspective on the ways in which it relates to state and national efforts. Greenberg, however, does not develop these relationships fully. His concluding chapter forecasts increasing success for plant and animal preservationists in the future. In the voluminous, multifaceted literature of natural history, Greenberg's study ranks high in quality. Most of these histories focus on species, region, or political unit. Those relating to the urban scene or urban/industrial regions are a distinct minority, a deficiency this Chicago regional study helps to correct.	4
Reviewed by Margaret Beattie Bogue, professor emerita of liberal studies and history, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her most recently published work is Fishing the Great Lakes, an Environmental History, 1783–1933 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000). Currently she is doing research on Lake Superior.

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.