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This anthology is the first sustained examination of American involvement in World War II through an environmental lens.
List of contents
Preface: American environments and the Second World War Peter Mansoor; Acknowledgments; Introduction: total war and American nature Thomas Robertson and Richard P. Tucker; Part I. New Weapons, New Spaces: 1. A war of mobility: transportation, American productive power, and the environment during World War II Thomas Robertson and Christopher W. Wells; 2. For land's sake: World War II military land acquisition and alteration Jean Mansavage; Part II. Military Materials I (Inorganic): 3. 'Tanks Are Born Underground': mining and World War II Kent Curtis; 4. Fueling the 'American Century': establishing the US petroleum imperative Brian Black; Part III. Military Materials II (Organic): 5. Soldiers of the soil: labor, nature, and American agriculture during World War II Kendra Smith-Howard; 6. When meals became weapons: American food in World War II Kellen Backer; 7. From field to foxhole: cigarettes and soldiers in World War II Joel R. Bius; Part IV. New Landscapes: Cities and Coasts: 8. A watery grave?: World War II and the environment on the American Gulf Coast Christopher M. Rein; 9. World War II and the urban environment: redirecting American politics in Los Angeles and beyond Sarah S. Elkind; Part V. New Frontiers: Microbes, Molecules, and Atoms: 10. Battling insects and infection: American chemical and pharmaceutical expansion during World War II Martha N. Gardner; 11. Shattered worlds: place, environment, and militarized landscapes at the dawn of atomic America Ryan H. Edgington; Part VI. Conservation: 12. Total war and the total environment: World War II and the shift from conservation to environmentalism Thomas Robertson; Index.
About the author
Thomas Robertson is Executive Director of the United States Educational Foundation (USEF) Fulbright in Kathmandu, Nepal and the author of The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (2012).Richard P. Tucker is Adjunct Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is co-editor of four multi-author books on the environmental history of the two World Wars. His previous publications include Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (2000).Nicholas B. Breyfogle is Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University. He is the author/editor of seven volumes, including Water History: Readings and Sources (2020) and Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History (2018).Peter Mansoor is the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History at The Ohio State University. He is the author of three books and co-editor of three volumes, including the award-winning The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945 (1999).
Summary
This anthology is the first sustained examination of American involvement in World War II through an environmental lens, focusing on how the War remade American landscapes, institutions, and environmental thinking, and how wartime developments shaped the contours of postwar American environments and environmental thinking.
