The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 112

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

economies of the West. The main themes of this chapter are monetary reces-
sion, natural resources, energy, and military/science research and development.
Gerald Nash has written an excellent overview of economic change in the
twentieth-century West. Although there is much to cover in the time period,
Nash does an admirable job of touching on all the apparent, and some not so
apparent, aspects of economic change in the West. He adroitly weaves the same
threads (agriculture, rivers, military, minorities, etc.) throughout each chapter.
Although each economic trend deserves its own in-depth study, this book should
be required reading for those with general and specific interests in economic
change over time. He has set the table for a broader examination of economic
change. His bibliographic essay also provides fodder for researchers desiring to
further their understanding of the economies and the federal government in
the twentieth-century West.
Seattle Dale Sterling
A Sense of the American West: An Environmental History Anthology. Edited by James E.
Sherow. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Pp. x+308.
Prologue, introduction, permissions, index, contributors. ISBN o-826-31914-9.
$19.95, paper.)
James E. Sherow's collection of engaging essays explores environmental history,
explaining the intersection of race, ethnicity, culture, class, and environment at
various points in history. With these previously published articles, Sherow pro-
vides readers with an example of the diversity of environmental histories and
methodologies in one anthology. Beginning with precontact interaction with the
environment, the articles continue with Anglo-American settlement, the late
nineteenth century, and the post-World War II years.
Because this volume encompasses such a large time span, the editor divides
the wide variety of articles into four sections with introductory essays. Section
One includes a well-conceived essay on the Konza Prairie which points out that
nature does not consist of a stable natural order, but rather an uncontrolled ran-
domness and that humans must understand their interaction with it. In the fol-
lowing article, Dan Flores insists convincingly that writers of environmental his-
tory must immerse themselves in the place before writing about it; after all, the
"spirit of place" and our interaction with it is not static (p. 37)-
Section Two focuses on the interaction between humans and the earth.
Robert MacCameron highlights the communal agricultural structure of colonial
New Mexico. He combines environment, cultural understanding, legal tradition,
and Pueblo-Spanish interaction, to explain human adaptation to the environ-
ment. Dan Flores clearly illuminates Plains Indians' dependence on bison and
the interwoven nature of Native American social structure, economics, and
diplomacy during the early nineteenth century. Sherow's article discusses Native
American adaptation to the horse, as well as the continued and random environ-
mental changes that determined a tribe's future success or failure.

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