Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation

Putting a provocative new slant on the history of U.S. conservation, Vanishing America reveals how wilderness preservation efforts became entangled with racial anxieties—specifically the fear that forces of modern civilization, unless checked, would sap white America’s vigor and stamina.

Nineteenth-century citizens of European descent widely believed that Native Americans would eventually vanish from the continent. Indian society was thought to be tied to the wilderness, and the manifest des...