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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Getting under the hood, March 7, 2002
This review is from: The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (Hardcover)
Everyone always loves the West -- people hike the mountains for adventure, they hide out in the small towns when they're broke, and they buy ranchettes when they have money. The West is like a big old classic car that symbolizes something dependable and that people love to get in and hit the road -- the loooong road. "The Natural West" is for those brave enough to get under the hood and see how that car operates. "Environmental History" is a fairly recent discipline, coming out of conventional history meeting ecology and the changing understanding of what a human being really is. Dan Flores is a hip guy with a smart take on the whole field. He's out there hiking, taking photos (they're in the book), running his wolf-dog, building his adobe house, and fighting the exotic weeds on his acreage -- and all the time he's thinking, "How does this work? How does all this fit together?" Not that he will hand you a lot of predigested answers. This book, broken into chapters by region, is a tool kit, a beginner's manual, a map to the territory. It's a place to start getting under the hood and finding out how the motor really works. He's handed you all the clues. This is a book to keep on hand and return to. Every revisitation will reveal the beginning of a new trail.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A seminal book on bioregional history and ecohistory, March 16, 2006
Dan Flores picks up where he left off in Caprock Canyonlands and Horizontal Yellow to give an overview of the state of bioregional history in the American West, followed by some chapters applying those latest findings and approaches to some specific times and places.
There's a lot to learn here.
Flores puts "paid" to the Roussellian "eco-noble savage" idea of Paul Shepard. In Exhibit A, he notes how the Comanche, after becoming (allowing themselves to be?) co-opted by the global market, were exerting their own downward pressure on bison numbers.
He shows how sociocultural history and ecohistory meet in forming bioregionalism by documenting Utah Mormons' high hostility to environmentalism. In doing so, he nuances Powell's high praise for the environmental standards of Mormon communal development in the 19th century.
He talks about the southern Plains, Texas' Caprock, in a way that you too will lament there being no National Park there.
All of this done in an easy to read style.
One complaint: The title "The Natural West" is a bit misleading. After discussing how "the West" is actually composed of several dozen bioregions, Flores basically ignores anything west of the Rockies -- the Great Basin, Sonoran, Mohave and Upper Basin/Northwest deserts, the Sierras, Southern and Northern Cascades, and the various sections of Pacific Coast.
With that allowance, it's a great book.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Provides a Paul Shepard Critique, October 7, 2002
This review is from: The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (Hardcover)
I would add to the previous review that the first chapter provides a critique of Paul Shepard's thesis that our society is broken, and will never become whole again until we return to our hunter-gatherer roots. I was interested in this because I am a big Paul Shepard fan and have not before seen a critique of his ideas from a source I can respect. I don't know that Flores even gets Shepard's ideas completely straight, and I wish he had devoted more space to his critique, but at least it's something to get you thinking about. I hope I haven't turned off those looking for a more straight-forward natural history of the West and southern plains, because except for that first chapter, that's what this book is- and it's excellent in its digestible chapters on components of this region.
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