Escaping the Dark, Gray City: How Conservation Re-made City, Suburb, and Countryside in the Progressive Era

FAIN: FT-54726-07

Benjamin Heber Johnson
Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX 75205-1902)

This book examines how Americans sought refuge in nature at the turn of the 20th century. What Americans of this time meant by “nature” and what they believed that it offered and demanded of their increasingly urban and industrial civilization lie at its heart. Its central argument is that conservation was a broad and ambitious social movement that understood itself to be restoring a spiritually renewing and materially sustainable relationship with a nature made vulnerable by the unprecedented power of humanity. Conservation involved not only the remote forests and wildernesses that epitomized nature for many Americans, but also dense industrial cities, leafy suburbs, and private homes, and the social relations of these spaces.

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Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation (Book)
Title: Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation
Author: Benjamin Heber Johnson
Abstract: The turn of the twentieth century caught America at a crossroads, shaking the dust from a bygone era and hurtling toward the promises of modernity. Factories, railroads, banks, and oil fields—all reshaped the American landscape and people. In the gulf between growing wealth and the ills of an urbanizing nation, the spirit of Progressivism emerged. Promising a return to democracy and a check on concentrated wealth, Progressives confronted this changing relationship to the environment—not only in the countryside but also in dense industrial cities and leafy suburbs. Drawing on extensive work in urban history and Progressive politics, Benjamin Heber Johnson weaves together environmental history, material culture, and politics to reveal the successes and failures of the conservation movement and its lasting legacy. By following the efforts of a broad range of people and groups—women’s clubs, labor advocates, architects, and politicians—Johnson shows how conservation embodied the ideals of Progressivism, ultimately becoming one of its most important legacies.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300115505/escaping-dark-gray-city
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0300115504
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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