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Environmental restoration is now a widespread pursuit, as landscape designers, engineers, and professional biologists seek to restore degraded landscapes to some previous, more desirable, state. In this prize-winning work, Marcus Hall shows that such restoration is not a new endeavor but an idea with strong roots in the nineteenth century, particularly in the work of the pioneering American conservationist, George Perkins Marsh. While Marsh served as the American ambassador to Italy from 1861 to 1881, he wrote his influential work, Man and Nature, which Hall calls "the world's first comprehensive warning of the human propensity to degrade natural systems."
By examining the history of restoration in both the United States and Italy since 1850, Hall reveals how the idea and practice of "restoration" shifts according to time, place, and culture. After establishing the historic influences that distinguish restoration in Italy (where the emphasis is on preserving the pastoral) and the United States (where the emphasis is on wilderness), Hall discusses the long-term restoration of two damaged watersheds, one in the Italian Alps (1850-1950) and the other in the Rocky Mountains (1910-1970). Restorationists gave different answers about how and what to restore. By contrasting land management in these two countries and elsewhere, this book clarifies the different meanings of restoration, shows how such meanings change from place to place in different times, and suggests how restorationists can apply these insights to their own practices. The book should appeal to scholars and students in landscape studies, environmental studies, conservation and preservation, and professionals and practitioners in these and related fields
An earlier version of this manuscript was awarded the Rachel Carson Prize as the best doctoral dissertation in environmental history by the American Society for Environmental History. Also chapter 4, about early restoration efforts in the American West, was awarded the 2002 Ray Allen Billington Prize by the Western History Association. Marcus Hall's dissertation adviser was William Cronon, a leading scholar in environmental history and author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West.
Although there are as yet no comparable books on Virginia's backlist, Yale published a heavily ilustrated book, Grove and Rackham THE NATURE OF MEDITERRANEAN EUROPE, $75.00 that sold 500 copies in US and 700 through the UK office.
About the author
Marcus Hall teaches in the environmental studies program at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is the winner of the Rachel Carson Prize from the American Society for Environmental History and the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Western History Association.
Summary
Environmental restorationists are intensely divided when it comes to finding ways to rehabilitate damaged ecosystems. Marcus Hall offers an alternative to the usual narrative of humans disrupting and spoiling the earth. His purpose is to show that those who believed in restoration did not always agree on what they wanted to restore.
