History / Geography / Environment / Rural Studies / Wisconsin
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A
Thousand Pieces of Paradise "An insightful, engaging, and highly
readable treatment of a This is an ecological history of property and a cultural history of rural ecosystems in one of Wisconsin's most famous regions, the Kickapoo Valley. While examining the national war on soil erosion in the 1930s, a controversial real estate development scheme, Amish land settlement, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam project, and Native American efforts to assert longstanding land claims, Lynne Heasley traces the historical development of modern American property debates within ever-more-diverse rural landscapes and cultures. Heasley argues that the way public discourse has framed environmental debates hides the full shape our system of property has taken in rural communities and landscapes. She shows how democratic and fluid visions of property-based on community relationships—have coexisted alongside individualistic visions of property rights. This environmental biography of a landscape and its people holds lessons for many communities. "This penetrating analysis of the complex forces that shape the landscape is a welcome relief form the narrow, rancorous debate between private property rights and outside government interference."—Brian Donahue, author of The Great Meadow and Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town. "Readers outside southwestern Wisconsin may wonder what is to be gained by reading an environmental history of three neighboring rural townships. The answer is, quite a bit about how social attitudes and land use have shaped the rural US on a continental scale. Heasley (history and environmental studies, Western Michigan Univ.) uses computer and satellite mapping technology as well as a precise eye for the texture of local historical differences to eloquently describe how people with different attitudes produced very different results in one river valley. The Amish, for example, began immigrating to Clinton Township in 1966 and, 40 years later, own half of it. Influences also include widespread real estate development in some areas, and the US Army Corps of Engineers' La Farge Dam Project, de-funded by Congress in 1975 in a partially finished state. It was the first corps project to be halted for environmental reasons. Land acquired by the corps for the dam later became a subject of land claims by Native Americans, the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago). Heasley's background in history and environmental studies suits her well to tell this story superbly. So much for cookie-cutter stereotypes of the rural Midwest! Summing Up: Highly recommended. "—Choice, June 2006 Lynne Heasley
is assistant professor of history and environmental studies at
Western Michigan University. For more information contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu |
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