Using the lens of environmental history, William D. Bryan provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the post-Civil War South by framing the New South as a struggle over environmental stewardship. Bryan writes the region into the national conservation movement for the first time and shows that business leaders played a key role shaping the ideals of American conservationists.

Uses the unlikely story of Providence Canyon - and the 1930s contest over its origins and meaning - to recount the larger history of dramatic human-induced soil erosion across the South and to highlight the role that the region and its erosive agricultural history played in the rise of soil science and soil conservation in America.

Explores the ways in which Appalachia served as a laboratory for the exploration and practice of American conceptions of nature. With chapters dedicated to microhistories focused on particular commodities, Drew Swanson builds on recent Appalachian studies scholarship, emphasizing the diversity of a region long considered a homogenous backwater.

Explores the ways in which Appalachia served as a laboratory for the exploration and practice of American conceptions of nature. With chapters dedicated to microhistories focused on particular commodities, Drew Swanson builds on recent Appalachian studies scholarship, emphasizing the diversity of a region long considered a homogenous backwater.

Examines the local boosters, gentlemen farmers, historical preservationists, and nature-seeking suburbanites who abandoned the city to live in the metropolitan countryside during the twentieth century. These property owners formed the vanguard of the antigrowth movement that has defined metropolitan fringe politics across America.