Beyond Iconic and Ironic In U.S. Environmental History Item

In two new monographs and an essay collection, these 13 authors grapple with the “nature-culture paradox,” the entanglement of these two slippery categories which many Americans have long constructed as separate (Shaffer and Young, p. 1). The scholars here reject the project of locating a pure nature within human history, but all investigate the ways in which Americans over time deployed nature in opposition to culture with problematic and fascinating results in places from Rocky Mountain National Park to rural Georgia, and in the representational realms of politics, science, culture, and society.