Chicago Botanic Garden

Education — Lenhardt Library

Current Books & Book Reviews

PHOTO: bookcover

Paolo Squatriti (editor).
Natures Past: The Environment and Human History.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.
Paper, 358 pp., ISBN 0–472–06960–8, $32.00.

In ten essays written by anthropologists, foresters, historians and literary scholars, the theme in this scholarly text is how different societies throughout history have related to nature. Using this multi-disciplined approach, the authors discuss the fact that societies have caused environmental change from earliest times. Such alterations are the result of interactions between ecology, culture, and human demands. Editor Paolo Squatriti has collected these writings to illustrate the fact that environmental change is not new; people have been altering their surroundings, often unwittingly, throughout history.

— Marilyn K. Alaimo, garden writer and volunteer, Chicago Botanic Garden.