Creating the North American Landscape

An "engrossing" memoir of traveling Canada's Qu'Appelle River Valley via horse, canoe, and Native American dogsled (Calgary Herald). The North American Plains are one of the world's great landscapes-but today, the most intimate experience most of us are likely to have of the great grasslands is from behind the window of a car or train. It was not always so. In the earliest days, Plains Indians traveled on foot across the vastness, with only the fierce, wolflike Plains dogs as companions. Later, with the arrival of Europeans, horses and canoes appeared on the Plains. In this book, Norman Henderson, a leading scholar of the world's great temperate grasslands, revives these traditional modes of travel, journeying along 200 miles of Canada's Qu'Appelle River valley by dog and travois (the wooden rack pulled by dogs and horses used by Native Americans to transport goods), then by canoe, and finally by horse and travois. Henderson interweaves his own adventures with the exploits of earlier Plains travelers, like Lewis and Clark, Francisco Coronado, La Vérendrye, and Alexander Henry. Lesser-known experiences of the fur traders and others who struggled to cross this strange and forbidding landscape also illuminate the story, while Henderson's often humorous description of his attempts to find and train old Plains breeds of dogs and horses highlight the difficulties involved in recreating archaic travel methods. He also draws on the history of the world's other great temperate grasslands: the South American pampas and the Eurasian steppes. Recalling the work of Ian Frazier and Jonathan Raban, Henderson's account offers a deeper understanding of the natural and human history of the North American Plains.

An in-depth look at the history and culture of mobile homes in the United States. In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and '50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home. In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed "estates" aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles. With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream.

This award-winning history provides a fascinating look at the Civil War era oil boom in western Pennsylvania and its devastating impact on the region. In Petrolia, Brian Black offers a geographical and social history of a region that was not only the site of America's first oil boom but was also the world's largest oil producer between 1859 and 1873. Against the background of the growing demand for petroleum throughout and immediately following the Civil War, Black describes Oil Creek Valley's descent into environmental hell. Known as "Petrolia," the region of northwestern Pennsylvania charged the popular imagination with its nearly overnight transition from agriculture to industry. But, so unrestrained were these early efforts at oil drilling, Black writes, that "the landscape came to be viewed only as an instrument out of which one could extract crude." In a very short time, Petrolia was a ruined place-environmentally, economically, and to some extent even culturally. Black gives historical detail and analysis to account for this transformation.

The life of the visionary conservationist who created the Appalachian Trail is chronicled in this "first-rate biography of a unique American thinker" (Mark Harvey, Journal of American History). Born in 1879, Wilderness Society cofounder Benton MacKaye was a pioneer in linking the concepts of preservation and recreation. Spanning three-quarters of a century, his career had a major impact on emerging movements in conservation, environmentalism, and regional planning. MacKaye's seminal ideas on outdoor recreation, wilderness protection, land-use planning, community development, and transportation have inspired generations of activists, professionals, and adventurers seeking to strike a harmonious balance between human need and the natural environment. This pathbreaking biography provides the first complete portrait of this significant figure in American environmental, intellectual, and cultural history. Drawing on extensive research, Larry Anderson traces MacKaye's extensive career, examines his many published works, and describes the importance of MacKaye's relationships with such influential figures as Lewis Mumford, Aldo Leopold, and Walter Lippmann.