Review of Nature at War: American Environments and World War II

478 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY 96:3 • August 2022 help us to imagine why we need to go the mountains, and what we need to do once we return. Michael Reidy DOI: 10.1215/00021482-9825451 Nature at War: Amer i can Environments and World War II. Edited by Thomas Robertson, Richard P. Tucker, Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Peter Mansoor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 375 pp., $99.99, hardcover, ISBN 9781108419765. Almost two decades ago, John R. McNeill pointed out that American environmental historians had not recognized “the prominence of the military in American life since 1941, and its signifcance in shaping American environments.”1 The following year, Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell produced Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War (2004), an edited volume on the global environmental dimensions of war from sixteenth-century India, through the American Civil War, culminating with several chapters on the world wars. That collection opened the door for other works, including three edited volumes on the global environmental effects of war: War and the Environment: Military Destruction in the Modern Age (2009), edited by Charles E. Closmann; The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War (2017), edited by Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, and Timo Vuorisalo; and Environmental Histories of the First World War (2018), edited by Richard P. Tucker, Tait Keller, J.R. McNeill, and Martin Schmid. These works, along with a growing number of other historical works published in the last decade, constitute the robust beginnings of military-environmental history, a feld that investigates the historical reciprocal interactions between nature and violent conflict. Nature at War: Amer ican Environments and World War II is the first military-environmental history to explore the effects of the world wars on specifcally American ecologies and landscapes, “where slices of nature were extracted and processed into military machines and materiel,” illustrating the environmental interconnectedness between the home front and the battlefront (3). Scholars of twentieth-century warfare are familiar with the idea of total war—the complete mobilization of all natural, industrial, and human resources for the war effort—and the preponderance of economic and political histories on it. The fourteen contributors to this volume trace the consequences of total war on American environments and landscapes and in American minds and bodies. They remind us of the environmental origins of the military-industrial complex—how it shaped the built environment, Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/agricultural-history/article-pdf/96/3/478/1636515/478ross.pdf by MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIV user on 29 March 2024 Montana State University Book Reviews 479 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/agricultural-history/article-pdf/96/3/478/1636515/478ross.pdf by MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIV user on 29 March 2024 material culture, and intellectual geography as well as the American landscapes of today. World War II was a war of superlatives: the largest seaborne invasion at Normandy, the most petroleum products used, the most food distributed and consumed, the most weaponry and ammunition deployed. All signaled the decisiveness of American production. That production had its origins somewhere, notably the soils, mines, and factories of the United States and its global extractive reach for things like rubber for tires and bauxite for aluminum. As the United States became an “arsenal of democracy” with a proliferation of military training camps across southern and western states, national rationing decisions had dramatic local consequences for farmers, and the Allied destruction of cities abroad held consequences for environmental and human health at home easily overlooked in a global war. Indeed, this was a war to win at any cost, including the sacrifce of landscapes and ecologies. Those consequences of total war—whether in terms of barren strip mining created by resource extraction to build tanks (contributor Kent Curtis), acres of soybean farms plowed under to make way for newly constructed aviation factories (Thomas Robertson and Christopher W. Wells), or military base construction and expansion of oil refning along the Gulf Coast that led to the growth of large metropolitan areas in sensitive biomes (Christopher M. Rein)—remade the American landscape and resulted in the birth of the Superfund site. Nature at War is organized into six parts illustrating themes related to (1) land acquisition, (2) ore extraction and petroleum, (3) agriculture and food production, (4) the creation of a military-industrial geography, (5) chemical and atomic revolutions, and (6) the resultant awareness of the earth’s fragility that came out of such a global conflagration. Of particular interest to readers of Agricultural History will be part 3, which makes it clear that American power rested on natural resources. Kendra Smith-Howard’s chapter explores the changes to agriculture resulting from the war. While in the short term all efforts were on increasing production, the more pronounced long-term effects included increased mechanization, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and antibiotics for livestock. Kellen Backer focuses on the fruits of that agricultural revolution, the food. The United States produced enough food to feed itself and its allies. Victory gardens, tackling food waste, and promoting canning helped more Americans learn about local agriculture. In the postwar decades, this food system also became more industrialized as canned, frozen, and dehydrated foods made their way onto grocers’ shelves. Joel R. Bius’s work on the cigarette recounts how tobacco production, once curbed under New Deal soil conser vation programs, increased during the war to satisfy the cravings of soldiers and workers. However, war production had its limits, 480 AGRICULTURAL HISTORY 96:3 • August 2022 Cyn thia Ross Texas A&M University–Commerce DOI: 10.1215/00021482-9825461 Note 1. John R. McNeill, “Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History,” History and Theory 42, no. 4 (2003): 17. The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. By Charles Mann. New York: Knopf, 2019. 616 pp., $18.00, paperback, ISBN 9780345802842. The Wizard and the Prophet explores the central question plaguing agriculture and conser vation today: what should be humankind’s role in sustaining both the planet and our own species? While considering how to feed tomorrow’s world, Charles Mann provides historical scaffolding for understanding a suite of modern environmental crises by creating a spectrum for environmental solutions bound by the poles of techno-optimism and ecopessimism. Cleverly labeling these poles as the Wizard and the Prophet, Mann distinguishes how the Wizard relies on technological innovation to surpass environmental limits, whereas the Prophet prioritizes respecting ecological constraints. In doing so, Mann distills a multitude of complex issues into a simple framework while transcending the dichot omy of environmental despair and Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/agricultural-history/article-pdf/96/3/478/1636515/478ross.pdf by MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIV user on 29 March 2024 as the lessons of soil conser vation made farmers and policy-makers resistant to increase beyond a certain point. Nevertheless, human health suffered because of government distribution of tobacco to military personnel that would destroy the human environment for generations. The editors and contributors to this volume have produced an exceptional work of military-environmental history that offers powerful environmental perspectives to the study of World War II and helps us consider that nature is always present in production and war, no matter how far removed it may seem from industrialized factories or cutting-edge battlefeld technologies. Although several contributors include discussions of natural resource acquisition from European colonies and independent states, the American empire—territories in the Pacifc and Caribbean that were (and in some cases still are) part of the United States—was notably absent. Nature at War makes it clear that the environmental changes brought about by the war irrevocably remade the world we live in today with dependency on fossil fuels, cheap processed food, vast transportation networks, synthetic fertilizers, industrial food systems, and a growing list of multigenerational health crises and polluted sites dating from World War II and its legacies.