Book Review: Nature's Metropolis
Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon, published by W. W. Norton, 1991. (Amazon)
For many people history is still seen as a presentation of facts that tell people "this is the way it was." But for historians, and their readers, it is much more complex, less objective and more subjective. Today the historian is something of an editor, presenting only a portion of a multitude of facts on a particular subject to generate different ways of looking at our past. Perhaps the best example of this multitude of voices is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Another, more narrowly-focused but no less grand, addition to this "genre" is William Cronon's history of 19th-century Chicago and its environs, Nature's Metropolis.
Immediately, the title hints at the book's angle: the interdependence of city and country. Many histories separate the city from the country, but Cronon acknowledges that one cannot exist without the other. Chicago would not be the city it is today without the small towns and miles and miles of farmland to its west. Equally, these places could not exist without a metropolis available for the selling and distribution of crops, meat, and lumber. And its these three pieces that tell the story of 19th-century Chicago, not the politicians nor the architects nor other people who sit behind the businessmen in shaping the evolution of the city and its hinterlands and laying the foundation for Capitalism's global rise.
Throughout the book, Cronon uses the phrase "second nature" to help describe both the physical and abstract/economic modifications of the land's "first nature". This second nature illustrates that we have changed most of the American landscape for our ends so much in the last few hundred years to render the first nature but a distant history or memory. As sad a fact as that may be, the idea of second nature also indicates that our paths are not predetermined and ecologic destruction for economic ends is not the only means. Like many other histories, this book looks at the past, but it also looks to the future, creating a well-researched body of knowledge and a unique viewpoint that can affect the way we look at the relationship between city and country and perhaps affect the way decisions are made in the future.
For many people history is still seen as a presentation of facts that tell people "this is the way it was." But for historians, and their readers, it is much more complex, less objective and more subjective. Today the historian is something of an editor, presenting only a portion of a multitude of facts on a particular subject to generate different ways of looking at our past. Perhaps the best example of this multitude of voices is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Another, more narrowly-focused but no less grand, addition to this "genre" is William Cronon's history of 19th-century Chicago and its environs, Nature's Metropolis.
Immediately, the title hints at the book's angle: the interdependence of city and country. Many histories separate the city from the country, but Cronon acknowledges that one cannot exist without the other. Chicago would not be the city it is today without the small towns and miles and miles of farmland to its west. Equally, these places could not exist without a metropolis available for the selling and distribution of crops, meat, and lumber. And its these three pieces that tell the story of 19th-century Chicago, not the politicians nor the architects nor other people who sit behind the businessmen in shaping the evolution of the city and its hinterlands and laying the foundation for Capitalism's global rise.
Throughout the book, Cronon uses the phrase "second nature" to help describe both the physical and abstract/economic modifications of the land's "first nature". This second nature illustrates that we have changed most of the American landscape for our ends so much in the last few hundred years to render the first nature but a distant history or memory. As sad a fact as that may be, the idea of second nature also indicates that our paths are not predetermined and ecologic destruction for economic ends is not the only means. Like many other histories, this book looks at the past, but it also looks to the future, creating a well-researched body of knowledge and a unique viewpoint that can affect the way we look at the relationship between city and country and perhaps affect the way decisions are made in the future.
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