Category:History

Understanding the past to know the way forward.

World History

Collapse by Jared Diamond, (celebrated author of Guns, Germs and Steel) seeks to understand why so many civilizations have been unable to avoid destroying the environment they depended upon. In this selection he summaries the reasons, which may also be involved in your issue. TEDtalk video

California History

Mining California: An Ecological History by Andrew C. Isenberg (see course reader)

The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area by Richard Walker

A history of California counties.

Californiahistory.com is absolutely devoted to the history of California. General and more difficult to search for details about one place.

Links to popular California history sites (e.g., railroads, museums)

History of the county of Los Angeles (not just the city--the entire county)

History and nostalgia, for historic minded.

Native Americans (see also Native American page)

Charles Mann, author of 1491(book exploration on how Native Americans used the land) has also written about interactions between colonists and Native peoples.

Another account of megafauna extinctions

Histories of Environmental Movement

Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (1993) Review of Gottlieb book that tells alternative history of the environmental movement.

American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970-1990 / edited by Riley E. Dunlap and Angela G. Mertig. Published Philadelphia : Taylor & Francis, c1992 (provides a succinct conventional overview of U.S. environmental movement in introductory chapter)

Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement, Island Press; Revised Edition, 2003

California Environmental History bibliography

US Environmental History bibliography

One of the early debates about the environment was between Preservationists such as John Muir and Conservationists such as Gifford Pinchot is explored in the video The Wilderness Idea, which can be found at McHenry Library (ask for VT2197) Discussion of the evolution of the term "conservation"