Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in tweets, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to the new edition of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West (Nebraska, 2023) by Sara Dant.
About the Book:
Historical narratives often concentrate on wars and politics while omitting the central role and influence of the physical stage on which history is carried out. In Losing Eden award-winning historian Sara Dant debunks the myth of the American West as “Eden” and instead embraces a more realistic and complex understanding of a region that has been inhabited and altered by people for tens of thousands of years.
A Word from the Author:
I’ve been so pleased that in its first year, Losing Eden has found a broad audience. Readers across the popular and academic spectrum have responded enthusiastically to the book’s core themes of reconciling economic success and ecological destruction, creating and protecting public lands, and achieving sustainability. In particular, the chapters on Idaho Senator Frank Church, whose consensus politics still provide a compelling and democratic model for balancing economy and environment, and on contemporary climate change challenges framed by my travelogue from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have generated wonderful email exchanges and thought-provoking discussions.
At the Tucson Book Festival this past March, I had the opportunity to talk about the book and the West with an audience of more than a hundred people, thanks to the Western National Parks Association. The always-generous Ed Roberson and I spoke for more than an hour on his terrific Mountain & Prairie podcast, the Smithsonian Association sponsored an in-depth talk on the book, the Idaho Humanities Council hosted a week-long teacher seminar featuring Losing Eden and podcast), and I had the incredible opportunity to be involved in one of the latest Ken Burns documentaries, The American Buffalo. No matter the venue, people have been drawn to the compelling story that the past, present, and future West has to tell. One of my favorite compliments came from a teacher who said, “I had heard of a lot of these topics, but I had no idea how powerfully connected they all were and are.”
The truth is, of course, that the environmental history of the West – the big history of people and nature across deep time – is fraught with difficult topics. The challenge was to capture those stories within a readable, compelling narrative that carries the reader from Beringia, through the Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post–World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues all while drawing upon the latest science and thinking. The motivation for this long arc is pretty straightforward: I believe that the greatest threat to the West, the United States, and the world is global climate change. Some of the consequences are already evident – we’re all feeling it this summer – and the possibilities yet to come are frightening. But because the American West is at the vanguard of these environmental shifts, the need to develop a long-term sustainable relationship between people and nature in this region has become particularly urgent.
Now is the time for action, I believe, because in the end, we all need clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment, which makes all of us “environmentalists.” I also believe that there is reason to be optimistic. Losing Eden is not only my valentine to the West but also my act of hope that we might yet learn the environmental lessons of the past and bring about a sustainable future. As the writer Wallace Stegner reminds us, “One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope.” And as its environmental history attests, the West abides.
Reviews:
“. . . this text serves an important purpose in the field of environmental history by connecting seminal texts in unique ways, tackling a huge topic in a way that is highly organized and enjoyable to read, and demonstrating why understanding the environmental history of the U.S. West is as pressing now as ever.” —Jacey Anderson, H-Environment
“In writing such an accessible book for general readers and scholars alike, Dant successfully manages to create a space for everyone to feel a sense of responsibility for the future of the West.” —Georgianna Karahalis, Annals of Wyoming
“In a brand-new version of her Losing Eden, Santa Fe-area writer Sara Dant brings research and writing talents to this story that will rearrange your mental furniture.” —Dan Flores, Feliz Navidad
“[Losing Eden] is a penetrating take on the complicated ways that humans impact their environs.” — Publisher’s Weekly
“An updated version of the original 2017 publication, Losing Eden is a classic in the environmental history of the American West . . . The author describes the conflict between those who recognized the waste and growing threat to western resources and econoic interests that sought to exploit the resources, a conflict too often won by the latter.”—Harlan Hague, RoundUp Magazine
“The author’s synthesis is readable and serves as a valuable entry point for those interested in learning about the environmental history of the American regional West.”—Kim Jackson, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly
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