Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West

by Sara Dant, Tom S. Udall (Foreword)

Historical narratives often concentrate on wars and politics while omitting the central role and influence of the physical stage on which history is carried out. In Losing Eden award-winning historian Sara Dant debunks the myth of the American West as “Eden” and instead embraces a more realistic and complex understanding of a region that has been inhabited and altered by people for tens of thousands of years.

In this lively narrative Dant discusses the key events and topics in the environmental history of the American West, from the Beringia migration, Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post–World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues. Losing Eden is structured around three important balancing economic success and ecological destruction, creating and protecting public lands, and achieving sustainability.

This revised and updated edition incorporates the latest science and thinking. It also features a new chapter on climate change in the American West, a larger reflection on the region’s multicultural history, updated current events, expanded and diversified suggested readings, along with new maps and illustrations. Cohesive and compelling, Losing Eden recognizes the central role of the natural world in the history of the American West and provides important analysis on the continually evolving relationship between the land and its inhabitants.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, American History, Nature, Environment

386 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2023

About the author

Sara Dant is a writer and historian whose work focuses on environmental politics in the United States with a particular emphasis on the creation and development of consensus and bi-partisanism. Her latest book is a new, completely revised edition of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West (2023, University of Nebraska Press) with a foreword by former NM Senator Tom S. Udall (son of Stewart Udall). She is also an advisor and interviewee for Ken Burns' The American Buffalo documentary film (October 2023), the author of several prize-winning articles on western environmental politics, a precedent-setting Expert Witness Report and Testimony on Stream Navigability upheld by the Utah Supreme Court (2017), and co-author of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American National Parks (2004) with Hal Rothman. Sara is Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. An avid outdoor enthusiast who was born and raised in the West, Dant now resides in the Galisteo River Valley outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and occasionally among the Sonoran saguaros north of Phoenix, Arizona.

Reviews

[Beth Lakin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great primer to the environmental issues of the American West. But, if you’ve done any amount of reading on the topic it does t really cover any groundbreaking territory.

[Noah Wills · Rating 3 out of 5]

While both very dense with information and the layout and language being repetitive, the narrative is one that will absolutely make you contemplate how we as a society relate to nature. The tone can be very negative but by the end, Dant has not given up hope, and I would encourage anyone interested in the nature world and environment to give it a read.

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a nice look at the history of the use and abuse of the US West, going all the back to pre-US days and pre-Columbian days.

Native Americans used and transformed it, by doing the first farming, as well as hunting many of the animals. The coming of the white man played a big shift, due to new technology, as well as the introduction to the horse. Things really began to shift once the US began coming out in large numbers. Kill off almost all of the buffalo, and then overgraze so heavily with cattle that it leads to the "Great Die-Up" in the late 1880s, for example. The notion that rain follows the plow proved to be as faulty as it was self-serving. Dant argues that the 1890s were a pivotal decade (the chatper is even called "The Pivotal Decade" as the US continues to use up resources, but at a much more rapid rate, with more mining, and ranching, and fishing, and the timber industry, and the use of water cannons to help mine - you eventually get the origins of a conservation movement as backlash.

The early 20th century saw the rise of conservation and preservation, two related ideas but definitely dissimilar ideas. Conservationists still wanted to use the resources, but manage them better. Preservationists - well, they want to, y'know, preserve nature for its own sake. The conservationists pretty much always have more juice. The 1930s see the construction of some huge dams, and Dant notes the impact that has on ecosystems, most notably the salmon of the Pacific Northwest. New industries emerge, such as the nuclear industry, where the US both mines for the radioactive material and tests it in bomb sites. Development is the name of the game, and the ever-rising auto also leaves its mark.

There is a shift towards conservation, with Frank Church of Idaho the master of building concensus for support for nature. He's the hero in this book, as he shephards through Congress several key bills that helps put federal authority behind attempts to preserve nature in the west. But there's a shift away from Church's efforts at consensus-building. Rachel Carson's "Silent Springs" calls for a harder line on things like wise use. Western ranchers and mine owners are increasingly upset at federal intervention, leading to the Sagebrush Rebellion. Consensus is utterly shattered by James Watt, who seems to be every kind of piece of shit at once in his brief three-year stint as Secretary of the Interior. He opens up as much as he can for industrial use, before falling for being a sexist racist. But his legacy lives on and polarization remains strong in this area.

The last chapter notes the rise of global warming and the horrible effects it has, from declining water reservoirs, to lower river/lake water holdings, to declining timber, to worse storms, to all the secondary effects of the primary effects. It's a depressing last chapter. Dant looks for optimism in the brief epilogue - and it does bug me that books always feel the need to end things on an optimistic note. If the book ends happily, then the happy epilogue forecasts a happy future. If a book ends more downbeat, then let's think of ways that can change. I'm off on a tangent here to be sure, but while I hope Dant is right in her hopefulness, I don't think her book backs that up.

Still, overall it's well-done portrait of the US West's environment. I just wished I'd taken notes on it as I went.

[Alex Milton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sara Dant’s Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West is a comprehensive environmental history focusing on addressing existing narratives surrounding the settlement and resource-extraction of the American West from human crossing into the continent from the Beringia Land Bridge to twenty-first century oil extraction operations. Rather than an environmental paradise that was lost to Euro-American material exploitation, Losing Eden frames the American West as harsh environment that proved difficult for sedentary settlement. Dant effectively argues that narratives of the West as paradise ignore the impact of native communities on the environment, falling into stereotypes of indigenous communities as “primitive”. A synthetic work relying primarily on interdisciplinary secondary sources, Dant argues that narratives framing material extraction in the American West as an extractive venture for Eastern corporations fail to acknowledge the role of mining and logging in developing cities and corporations in the West. Dant likewise challenges Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons”, by focusing on the power in federal control over Western lands in protecting lands from significant environmental ruin.

[Dan Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book everyone fascinated with the American West should read and have on their shelves. With more than 20,000 years of human history, the most dramatic landscapes in the U.S., vast, accessible federal lands, extensive Indian lands and tribes, and the country's most charismatic surviving big animals, the West has long deserved a readable book about its environmental story. In Losing Eden (spoiler alert: that title has a double entendre meaning) we’ve finally got such a book. Dr. Dant, a distinguished professor in Utah, begins her story long before the U.S. exists and carries its narrative into a climate-altered present. In the hands of this talented writer that's a road trip through time that’s a joy to travel. An audiobook version for actual summer road trips through the West is also on the way. Readers who absorb the stories and lessons in Losing Eden are going to see the American West and its history with a whole new awareness. For a region that boasts writers like Wallace Stegner, N. Scott Momaday, Donald Worster, Cormac McCarthy, and history-based filmmakers like Ken Burns and David Milch, that's real praise.

[Ayah Abdul-Rauf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great primer in the American West and environmental history as a whole. It made me mad--as a lot of history does, but I think that speaks to its effectiveness. That said, Dant is very unbiased in her descriptions here and everything is well sourced. I especially enjoyed the final chapter and the epilogue--all of it made a great compliment to THE CLIMATE BOOK, which was another must read of my year!
In general I find most history books to be very dry, but this was much easier to get through. Somewhat succint but still with enough bite to give you a deeper understanding and invoke curiosity.

[Thomas Lambe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

This is an important and timely work. A terrific environmental history of the West. The West isn't what we hear. This pulls together many issues that many/most readers will be familiar with. But by reading it it will help readers get a better understanding of the overall picture of the West. Highly recommended for science/history readers.

[Morgan (Turbo) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I only had time to read a fraction of the book I found it very interesting. In particular I like these beginning chapters about the West’s First Peoples as well as the distinction between Old West = extraction and New West = attraction. I may come back to it and read more in the future, specifically about California’s natural resources and Yosemite’s history.

[Fletcher Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all environmental texts, the content is moderately depressing/anxiety inducing. However, I think Dant did a good job balancing that with (reasonable) hope and an overall optimistic outlook on things.

[Dale Mize · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have pointed out, this book is a great teaching tool or introduction to environmental history in the West. However, if you have done much reading on these topics the book is interesting, but the information won’t be as surprising.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must read, especially now that James Watt's philosophic mentees are back in power. Move north and inward Californians.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the environmental history of the American West.

[Joey Deptula · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history of environmentalism in the American West including interesting takes on indigenous involvement and some key characters involved in the shaping of the west.

[Quentin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid introduction to environmental history of the west. Does well to put things into perspective. A very big picture book that loses a lot of nuisance region to region but that's okay.

[Ab · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent history of the west

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 2nd edition of an expansive history of the American West in terms of its environmental heritage.

The American West is defined as that which lay west of the 100th parallel, an appropriate definition since that land receives less rainfall than the land to its east and requires a very different land management ethos.

The author quickly goes over the wide swath of history of the land, both in terms of its geologic and its Indigenous history. The majority of the book describes the treatment of the land by Americans: its settlement, its exploitative abuse, movements toward conservation or preservation, resistance to conservation or preservation, the birth of the environmental movement, and the backlash to the environmental movement, bringing us to the near present day.

The author thus well describes how the American West has been exploited, particularly for the material and economic gain of the American East, how its development is unsustainable and was known as such for almost 150 years, and encourages a healthier land ethic. As indicated, the American West was never the Eden it was imagined to be, but it is certainly being lost.

**--galley received as part of early review program