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DIV Making extensive use of archival and other primary sources, David Schorr demonstrates that the development of the “appropriation doctrine,” a system of private rights in water, was part of a radical attack on monopoly and corporate power in the arid West. Schorr describes how Colorado miners, irrigators, lawmakers, and judges forged a system of private property in water based on a desire to spread property and its benefits as widely as possible among independent citizens. He demonstrates that ownership was not dictated by concerns for economic efficiency, but by a regard for social justice. /div
From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850-1931 explores the transformative journey of California’s agricultural economy, examining the shifts from mining and livestock to wheat farming, and eventually to horticulture. The book traces how California's economy underwent rapid changes through booms and busts, from the mining gold rushes to speculative real estate and the wheat industry. Despite its rich natural resources, the state's growth was hampered by unpredictable climate, limited land availability, and competition from other regions. The development of large-scale wheat farming in the 1860s brought mechanization and significant produc...
In this major reinterpretation of the Progressive era, Peter Coleman argues that the American welfare state had its origins in what he calls the "world-wide crisis of capitalism." Here and abroad, reformers, no longer content to treat the symptoms of distress, sought to achieve social, political, and economic justice by abandoning laissez faire in favor of governmental intervention. This study thoroughly documents the external forces that shaped the American Progressive movement and shows that the reformers' agenda for change drew heavily on foreign ideas and models as well as the American reform tradition. Tracing the international cross-currents of reform ideas, Coleman demonstrates that f...
n the Progressive Era (1890–1910), conservation became the first nationwide political movement in American history to grapple with environmental dilemmas like waste, pollution, resource exhaustion, and sustainability. This collection includes classic texts from such well-known figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir, as well as texts from lesser-known but equally important voices that are often overlooked in environmental studies: those of rural communities, women, and the working class.
A lucid and rewarding synthesis of cultural and western history. -- Richard W. Etulain, author of Writing Western History. Wrobel makes a fine contribution to the study of myth by analyzing the anxiety, or angst, Americans felt about the frontier in the half-century after 1890. This is an excellent book on a big subject, executed with much skill. -- Western Historical Quarterly. Direct, admirably brief, and crisply written. -- Journal of American History.
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The series presents an interdisciplinary approach to the use and misuse of resources in the American West. This volume comprises essays written between 1982 and 1994, and previously published in journals such as Western Historical Quarterly, J. of American History, and Environmental History Review). Pisani, one of the nation's leading environmental and Western historians, highlights the central role played by land, water, and timber allocation in the American West, and shows how efforts to achieve justice and efficiency were compromised by the region's obsession with achieving rapid economic growth. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR