This Land, This South: An Environmental History (review)

Vol. XXIV, No. 1 61 This Land, This South: An Environmental History. Albert E. Cowdrey. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983. vii and 236 pp., bibliography, index. $23 cloth. (ISBN 0-8131-0302-9) One of several in the series entitled New Perspectives on the South, Charles P. Roland , General Editor. Recent attention to man's impact on the environment has led to an explosion of environmental histories, and Cowdrey's book is a worthwhile addition to the list. In a series of chapters that reach from prehistory into the twentieth century, this book deals with the natural environment and its human modification through time. Although the bulk of the material focusses on the period from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the author begins with Appalachian orogeny and concludes with observations on such current topics as the growing Atchafalaya River delta in the 1970s. The book is extremely well documented, in fact, the bibliography itself is worthy of ones attention as references to the colonial environment . The author draws heavily from the writings of early naturalists such as Bartram and Catesby, and through judicious selection provides a vivid picture of environmental exploitation and modification. Additional grist comes from Colonial and State Statutes enacted to protect or control game. The chapter headings (e.g. "Isolation and Upheaval," "the Row—Crop Empire," and "The Transformation Begins") are so cryptic as to hide their contents, but the richness is there—soil exhaustion , disease, woods burning, malnutrition, bounty hunters, plume hunters, and the Corps of Engineers. Indeed, the book cannot be neglected by geographers, though some will chafe at the easy acceptance of some traditional themes, such as soil exhaustion, and forest exploitation . Of perhaps greatest interest is the rather detailed treatment of diseases , a subject lamentably neglected by most workers concerning the period. It is all too easy for present-day scholars to gloss over the human devastation wrought by cholera, malaria, dengue, dysentery, filariasis, yellow fever, hookworm and deficiency diseases. Although the EuroSam B. Hilliard, Department ofGeography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. 62Southeastern Geographer pean, the African, and the Indian usually were susceptible to different maladies, the collective toll was enormous. The book is written in easy, entertaining prose that should put no one to sleep. The author moves from point to point with confidence and grace. Although the book is essentially chronological, its major theme changes through time. In dealing with the period up to the war between the states, the book is a treatment of "Man grappling with Nature," but in the later period it becomes more ofa presentation ofthe conservation movement. In different words, the first half is a kind of environmental history while the last half is a history of the environmental movement. On the whole, it is a good book, one that should be required reading for those who deem themselves to be Southern Scholars. ...