“Christian Knoeller brings an impressive command of his subject grounded in an exhaustive job of research to give us a comprehensive and insightful survey of Midwestern nature writing in Reimagining Environmental History...Overall, though, one of the book’s chief strengths is its breadth of coverage; which makes it appealing to a number of audiences: Midwesternists, biologists, environmentalists, ecologists, historians of science, naturalists, and others. Moreover, it would be an extremely useful course text for classes in nature writing, environmental history, ecological theory, Midwestern history and literature, and possibly even a creative nonfiction course focused on nature writing.” —Marcia Noe, author of The Recuperation of Midwestern Studies
"Through the plowing of grasslands, draining of wetlands, leveling of forests, and damming of rivers, the Midwest has suffered severe ecological losses. In prose charged with a passion for wildness, Christian Knoeller shows how writers who grew up in this battered region have been haunted by the loss, how they have turned to Native American cultures for wisdom about the human place in nature, and how they have sought to imagine ways of healing the land. This is a sobering and rewarding book." —Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Conservationist Manifesto
“Knoeller’s book is an important addition to ongoing scholarship on environmental history in literature, eco criticism, and the intersection of landscape and imaginative vision in literature. It is extremely well written in a voice that will reach scholarly communities and the general public pursuing insights and solutions to dealing with climate change. The research is meticulously careful and thorough. The approach is a close reading of texts leading to new insights on literary history, an urgent plea for the healing aesthetics of the imagination, and an exquisitely clear memoir on the author’s experiences which enrich the scholarship.” —Ronald Primeau, author of Herbert Woodward Martin and the African American Tradition in Poetry
"In Reimagining Environmental History, Christian Knoeller has made a major contribution to helping us understand the role of ecological memory in our relationship with nature. From the introduction's invocation of Thoreau to the closing chapter's brilliant exploration of the work of regional writer Paul Gruchow, Knoeller has broken new ground in the literature of environmental history. A work both scholarly and personal, Reimagining Environmental History, could not be more timely. Through it we are asked to consider the voice of ten American artists, poets, fiction writers, and essayists—some well known, some not—in relation to landscape change and our current ecological crisis. It is a book that Paul Gruchow would have championed, one that should be considered indispensable reading in the environmental literature canon." —Louis Martinelli, Director of The Paul Gruchow Foundation
“Reimagining Environmental History provides a chronological and cross genre analysis of the environmental history of the Midwest. Knoeller provides a fresh and compelling perspective on many landscapes of the Midwest that include the Ohio River Valley, the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and lands of the Great Lakes, to stretches of tallgrass prairie and the High Plains of North America. The book is well-supported through careful reading of primary texts and parsing of secondary literature.” —Susan Naramore Maher, author of Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains
“This work is of benefit to all students of the natural world, and as such, it fills the reader with a continually changing landscape within the realm of not only the environment but also naturalist writing.”
—Great Plains Research
