'An accessible history examining how environmental policy has been shaped in the United States, from a perspective spanning the first settlement of the continent to the world of today. It is an excellent source for understanding how legislation, regulation, and politics have intertwined to produce the responses we have seen to environmental concerns over time. The book offers a framework for understanding the modern political landscape, and how intense polarization has developed over matters of seeming vital importance to the health and wellbeing of everyone. Recognizing how and why these attitudes came about, the author argues, can help them to be overcome.' David G. Anderson, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee and Project Director, Paleoindian Database of the Americas