Description:
How did we come to endanger the very future of life on Earth in our heedless pursuit of wealth and happiness? Laid Waste! answers that question with a 350-year review of the roots of an American culture of exploitation that has left us free, rich, and without an honest sense of how this came to be.
Review Quotes: "Laid Waste! is an easily digestible read...Larson is an exemplary writer who conveys history with clarity, whether discussing wilderness, indigeneity, race, class, labor, profit, and/or Manifest Destiny...[The] stellar epilogue highlights the goals of the edition: to try to challenge the fatalism that is entrenched in the current narratives of climate change, the application of history in overcoming that fatalism to work the problem of global warming, and the creation of a more sustainable society that can overcome false consciousness created through centuries-long and naturalizing narratives of 'improvement' that involved aspects of profitable 'exploitation.'"-- "Journal of American Culture"