Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America

by Christopher C. Sellers

Overview

Although suburb-building created major environmental problems, Christopher Sellers demonstrates that the environmental movement originated within suburbs — not just in response to unchecked urban sprawl. Drawn to the countryside as early as the late nineteenth century, new suburbanites turned to taming the wildness of their surroundings. They cultivated a fondness for the natural world around them, and in the decades that followed, they became sensitized to potential threats. Sellers shows how the philosophy, science, and emotions that catalyzed the environmental movement sprang directly from suburbanites' lives and their ideas about nature, as well as the unique ecology of the neighborhoods in which they dwelt.

Sellers focuses on the spreading edges of New York and Los Angeles over the middle of the twentieth century to create an intimate portrait of what it was like to live amid suburban nature. As suburbanites learned about their land, became aware of pollution, and saw the forests shrinking around them, the vulnerability of both their bodies and their homes became apparent. Worries crossed lines of class and race and necessitated new ways of thinking and acting, Sellers argues, concluding that suburb-dwellers, through the knowledge and politics they forged, deserve much of the credit for inventing modern environmentalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807869901
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	06/18/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Christopher C. Sellers is professor of history at Stony Brook University in New York. He holds a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale and an M.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; he is also on faculty at the graduate program in public health at Stony Brook University Medical Center. He is author of Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science and co-editor of, among other volumes, Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazards across a Globalizing World.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Most modern Americans started in the suburbs, so it's no surprise that much of our sense of the world around began there as well. They are edge communities, and therefore an ecological niche open to a great many ideas, as this fascinating account shows!—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

Historians have long known that America's suburbs were the birthplace of environmentalism. But this important book reconsiders why postwar suburbs mattered as both unique physical places as well as cultural spaces. The scholarship is cutting edge, the research prodigious, the analysis sharp, and the findings significant. Sellers says things that environmentalists and policymakers need to know.—Matthew Klingle, author of Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle

Christopher Sellers focuses on the place of nature in American suburbs and its influence on nature-seeking by suburbanites, confronting the definition of modern environmentalism. Crabgrass Crucible engages a central theme in urban history in a sophisticated and extraordinarily aggressive way.—Martin Melosi, author of Precious Commodity: Providing Water for America's Cities

Editorial Reviews

“Sellers’s convincing and nuanced argument places the birthplace of the U.S. environmental movement in the suburbs of its largest cities. . . The accomplishments of Crabgrass Crucible are significant.” — Technology and Culture

“Highlighting the social complexity of the suburban environmental movement, showing its deeply local character, and illuminating changing ideas of nature, Crabgrass Crucible develops a strong argument for environmentalism sprouting in the suburbs.” — American Historical Review

“The real treat of Sellers’s book is his masterful use of oral histories with suburbanites to provide snapshot biographies ranging over class, race, and environment.” — Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

“Crabgrass Crucible covers a broad and important theme with insight, imagination, and literary distinction even while demonstrating enormous research, deep intelligence, and impressive conceptualization. It should be required reading for anyone with a passing interest in suburban, urban, or environmental history.” — Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“Delivering significant insights and fearless observations in spirited prose, it is not only a highly engaging book but also an important one. . . . Exquisite historical detail.” — Environment and History

“A deft scholarly pen flows with accessible prose, and the author’s humanity shines through on every page.” — Social History of Medicine

“Sellers reveals a suburban world filled with nature and with people coming to terms with it in meaningful ways. . . . It is difficult to come away from this book without new insights into environmentalism and mid-twentieth-century suburbs. . . . Not all readers will agree with Sellers' interpretation, but no reader can afford to ignore it.” — Reviews in American History

“The detailed analysis and narrative adopted by Sellers is impressive and convincing. Indeed, while this suburban-environmental relationship remains to be fully understood, Sellers goes a long way in the right direction.” — Journal of Historical Geography

“Seller’s ecological narrative facilitates understanding how ordinary Americans, suffering from and, in some cases, overcoming consumer alienation in residential spaces, tamed nature and tamed themselves.” — Environmental History

“Crabgrass Crucible is an important contribution to the culture of urbanization and to our understanding of how galvanized suburbanites forged a new environmental movement. It should be required reading.” — Pacific Historical Review

From the Publisher

2013 Bronze Medal in Environment/Ecology/Nature, Winner
2013 Abel Wolman Award, Winner