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Hays, Samuel P. 1998. Explorations in environmental history: essays by Samuel P. Hays. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. xl + 584 p. $22.95, ISBN 0-8229-5643-8 (alk. paper).
Half a century ago, Indiana-born Samuel P Hays first became interested in conservation while working in public forests in western Oregon. For most of the ensuing five decades, he has made valuable contributions to the fields of environmentalism, environmental history, and environmental politics. His doctoral dissertation at Harvard, revised and published as Conservation and the gospel of efficiency: the progressive movement, 1890-1920, has been continuously in print since it first appeared in 1958. His scholarship has informed the thinking of several generations of American thought in the field.
The present collection contains 16 previously published essays, a semi-autobiographical introduction, and three previously unpublished selections. Hays has argued elsewhere (in Environmental History, January, 1996, pp. 29-30) that he and other easterners in the environmental movement, including many urban dwellers, have primarily been concerned with their own backyards. Recreation in the outdoors with this group has taken precedence over a more romanticized view of nature. They are vitally interested in the kind of world that will be handed on to succeeding generations. Hays believes that historians can "bring an historical analysis shaped by an independent historical perspective to both personal and political dimensions of environmental affairs" (1996. Environmental History 1:29-32) and he has essentially followed that prescription in this anthology.
Hays has broken his essays down into four categories. These include "The big issues," "Forest debates," "The politics of clean air," and "Environmental politics since World War...