DOWN TO EARTH

American history began not with Columbus’s landing, Jamestown, or even the peopling of the continent by PaleoIndians from Asia, but 180 million years ago, when the supercontinent called Pangaea began to disintegrate.

So Steinberg (History/Case Western Reserve Univ.) posits at the beginning of this readable, useful survey of US environmental history, which quickly shifts from climate and soil to take up the doings of PaleoIndians, Puritans, and pioneers. Steinberg makes a fine case for the importance of nature as an engine of history everywhere, but particularly on this continent, which, he notes, is both extraordinarily generous and extraordinarily harsh. Developing themes that extend throughout, he addresses matters that have only just begun to emerge with force in the professional literature. One is the vast reshaping of the environment due to the lifestyles of the prehistoric American Indians: “many coastal California environments,” he observes, “were human artifacts, the product of Indian burning, and would have reverted to woody vegetation had the native peoples not intervened.” Another is the devastating effect of livestock, and particularly cattle, on marginal environments such as the semi-arid southern plains; his long chapter called “The Secret History of Meat” is lively, even entertaining, and it is guaranteed to strip Steinberg of any potential chair at Hamburger University. Still another theme is the causal chain of unintended effects that follows our sweeping interventions in the environment; as Steinberg rightly warns after offering a raft of examples, “When it comes to the human control of nature, beware: Things rarely turn out the way they are supposed to.”

Apparently undertaken as a textbook, Steinberg’s accessible survey will prove useful as a reference for green-inclined readers in and out of school.