Christof Mauch Book order

Exploring the intersection of nature, history, and civilization, this unique travel guide offers a fresh perspective on American culture through the eyes of a seasoned German historian. Christof Mauch combines travel reporting with nature writing, personal insights, and philosophical reflections, revealing the complexities and transformations of the American landscape. By seeking the familiar in the unfamiliar and uncovering the extraordinary in seemingly ordinary places, Mauch invites readers to experience the diverse tapestry of the United States.

This volume focuses on environmental knowledge production in the United States by taking as starting points the impact of natural catastrophes and of public debates on climate change and environmental threats. Individual chapters address the social, political, economic, ecological, as well as cultural effects of natural catastrophes. At stake are issues such as disaster management and politics, disaster as spectacle, and the popular imagination of catastrophe. In bringing together historians and geographers, literary and cultural studies scholars, political scientists, anthropologists, and scientists from the United States and Europe, this volume demonstrates that the human experience and imagination of environment have played a truly important role in American culture.

Published in Association with the , Washington, D.C. Germany is a key test case for the burgeoning field of environmental history; in no other country has the landscape been so thoroughly politicized throughout its past as in Germany,and in no other country have ideas of 'nature' figured so centrally in notions of national identity. The essays collected in this volume ― the first collection on the subject in either English or German ― place discussions of nature and the human relationship with nature in their political co texts. Taken together, they trace the gradual shift from a confident belief in humanity ’s ability to tame and manipulate the natural realm to the Umweltbewußtsein driving the contemporary conservation movement. Nature in German History also documents efforts to reshape the natural realm in keeping with ideological beliefs ― such as the Romantic exultation of 'the wild' and the Nazis' attempts to eliminate 'foreign' flora and fauna ― as well as the ways in which political issues have repeatedly been transformed into discussions of the environment in Germany.

Filled with revelations and replete with telling detail, this riveting book lifts the curtain on the United States' secret intelligence operations in the war against Nazi Germany.