Wilderness and the American Mind: Fifth Edition
“Wilderness is a state of mind…not so much what wilderness is but what men think it is.”
Through history, politics, economics, and philosophy Nash captures (primarily white male city-dwelling) Americans’ relationship to nature in the United States of America since the country’s founding through the modern day. It traces the history of the environmental conservation/preservation movement and how we’ve come from fearing an overwhelming wilderness to now regarding it as a scarce national commodity and intellectual (and spiritual) concept. Though the perspective is narrowly focused and the writing sometimes academic to the point of dryness, it’s been described as “the Book of Genesis for conservationists” for a good reason: it’s possibly the best overview of American environmental history and represents a career’s worth of study, updated through five editions.