Americans and Their Land: The House Built on Abundance (review)

I use the following example to explain to my students the emergence of the progressive conservation movement. “Imagine when you came to class a barrel full of beer and that you are free to have all you want. Let’s also imagine you are not particularly interested in drinking a beer at that moment, but now imagine after half the class a couple of students have around their seats several empty beer bottles. And imagine as well you notice there are only a few beers left in the barrel. At the beginning of the class you might have found it amusing that some students were wolfing down the beers, especially since you weren’t interested in drinking one at that point but as you noticed fewer and fewer beers left you might have a less laissez faire attitude toward the beers, but it is also hard to change how the beers are passed out given the initial promise of free beer.”

Anne Mackin has written a great book on the dilemma of the beers in the barrel. It is a book chock full of information one can plug into American history lectures. More importantly Anne Mackin has written a book that makes one think about our past and what it tells us about our present. It is a work that makes us appreciate again not the details of Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis so much as why that thesis resonated so powerfully in our culture. As Mackin shows we may not agree about the meaning of the relative abundance of land in American culture but we would be naive not to realize its importance in our political economy and political culture. Mackin argues that our political culture was formed around both the beliefs in the importance of community and the assumption of abundance, especially land abundance, but as neighborhoods and the nation become more crowded conflicts emerges between the needs of community and the individual and the wants of the powerful against the needs of the less powerful. Government and the courts are the historic mediators of these conflicts, but, as Mackin shows, the mediation process itself is compromised and must be framed and contested in new terms.

Using examples from diverse communities such as those of Cape Cod, suburban Virginia, rural to urban Ohio, dairy farms of the northeast and the arid west, Mackin argues that land and home that were central to the American Dream are on a collision course with population increase and capitalist economic forces. At the end of the day Mackin believes, much in the spirit of Frederick Jackson Turner, over a hundred years ago, that shortages must engender a new approach to property and land if we are to steward our resources for ourselves and future generations. She also argues we need to rethink our approach to land so that the remaining resources can be apportioned justly and equitably among a growing population.

Much of this account will not be news to American social historians. What Mackin does is to tell the story in a new and refreshing fashion and bring together connections of which we might be only vaguely aware. In deeply mining the work of social, economic, and local and regional historians and historical geographers Mackin ties issues of modern development to its historical roots. Moving geographically across the country and moving back and forth through time using particular families and communities Mackin gives present day issues both faces and contexts. After reading this book it is even more difficult to drive past a new suburban development, enter a mega-shopping mall or even buy a gallon of milk without thinking about our history got us to this point. Metaphor and vignettes are powerful tools in her story telling.

Although, in general, these metaphors and vignettes work well for her, there are other times they leave the reader thirsty for more detailed analysis. Henry George is an obvious character for...