United States
£ GBP
Crimes against Nature reveals the hidden history behind three of the nation's first parklands: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Focusing on conservation's impact on local inhabitants, Karl Jacoby traces the effect of criminalizing such traditional practices as hunting, fishing, foraging, and timber cutting in the newly created parks. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes" and provides a rich portrait of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Illustrations xi
List of Tables xiii
Preface xv
Introduction: The Hidden History of American Conservation 1
PART I. Forest: The Adirondacks
1. The Re-creation of Nature 11
2. Public Property and Private Parks 29
3. Working-Class Wilderness 48
PART II. Mountain: Yellowstone
4. Nature and Nation 81
5. Fort Yellowstone 99
6. Modes of Poaching and Production 121
PART III. Desert: The Grand Canyon
7. The Havasupai Problem 149
8. Farewell Song 171
Epilogue: Landscapes of Memory and Myth Chronology of American Conservation Notes 203
Bibliography 267
Index 293
Afterword 199
Chronology of American Conservation 205
Notes 209
Bibliography 273
Index 299
Karl Jacoby is a professor in the Department of History and in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. He is the author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History.
"This insightful and lucid book combines social with environmental history, enriching both [...] Timely, eloquent, and provocative, Crimes against Nature illuminates contemporary struggles, especially in the West, over our environment."
– Alan Taylor, author of William Cooper's Town
"A compelling new interpretation of early conservation history in the United States [...] Powerfully argued and beautifully written, this book could hardly be more relevant to the environmental challenges we face today."
– William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West
"What a powerful and yet subtle tale of the fraught encounter between the conservationists' desire to 'engineer' wilderness with the property regime of the modern state and the unique, local, 'moral ecologies' of those who resisted! Rarely has this level of originality, close reasoning, and historical texture been brought into such harmony while preserving the whiff of lived experience."
– James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State
