Encyclopedia of American Environmental History

Gr 8 Up—Effectively promoting the view that "the environment and human relations with the environment over time lie "at the center of the American chronicle," this wide-ranging encyclopedia offers a distinctive angle on our country's past, present, peoples, and cultures. After a plethora of overview essays on subjects such as "Slavery and the Environment," "Urban Ecology," and "Gendered Environmental History," more than 750 alphabetically arranged entries introduce, describe, and analyze a huge range of figures, groups, incidents, and topics, from "Indians, Paleoindians" to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (covered in several entries) and from "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)" to the "Green Revolution." Written by one of about 350 scholars, each entry covers its subject in substantial length and detail and is rounded out with a gratifying array of cross-references and several leads to further information. Supplementary material includes a small set of unusually large and sharply reproduced black-and-white photos and prints, plus tables, maps, an extensive chronology, and the texts of, or excerpts from, about one hundred primary documents. Each volume closes with a set index. Despite a closing cumulative bibliography of print materials that is both indigestibly immense and unaccompanied by an equivalent list of resources in other media, this set earns high marks as a major update and enhancement of Shepard Krech, J. R. McNeill, and Carolyn Merchant's Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (Routledge, 2003) and merits a place in upper-level collections.—John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library