Content area
Full Text
Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson * James D. Rice * Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009 * xiv, 338 pp. * $40.00
Few environmental histories have taken the Annales School's call for longue durée history as seriously as Nature and History in the Potomac Country. As the complete title implies, Rice examines the environmental and social linkages of the Potomac River watershed over a period spanning more than a millennium, from 700 AD to the beginnings of the American Revolution. Telling a story over such a long period of time is a difficult task, and Rice turns to "that which every inhabitant of the region had in common, both before and after the advent of written sources: a relationship to the land itself" (p. 5). From the Allegheny Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, he uses the Potomac and its tributaries as a framework for exploring the opportunities and barriers presented by the physical environments of...