Table of Contents

Introduction
Clarence King and the Mapping of the Western Landscape
1: Paths of Science: The Maturation of a Public Ideal
2: Vertical History: Using Mountains to Measure Men
Robert Marshall and the Redefinition of Progress
3: True Places: Searching for Wild Nature in an Urban Age
4: The Forest and The Trees: Natural Science and Social Justice
Rachel Carson and the Social Enterprise of American Biology
5 The Biological Century: The Cultural Importance of Ecological Progress:
6: Poetic Revolutions: The Search for Natural Harmony
Epilogue

About the Author

John Herron is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the editor of Human/Nature: Biology, Culture, and Environmental History.

Reviews

"By putting science and the work of scientists back at the heart of the American environmental tradition, John Herron shows us, somewhat counter-intuitively, how influential figures such as Clarence King, Bob Marshall, and Rachel Carson have been to our vision of the good society. Carefully researched and beautifully written, Science and the Social Good deserves a wide readership."--Paul S. Sutter, University of Colorado
"In looking for nature, Americans have, more often than not, discovered themselves. In Science and the Social Good, John Herron brilliantly highlights the ways in which some of the leading practitioners of natural science inevitably found themselves enmeshed in profound questions of humanity and social ethics."--Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History
"In a field dominated by narratives of ecological damage that sometimes assume ideological homogeneity, it's refreshing to come across so careful a study of the subtle but crucial interplay between ideas and practices. By putting human complexity at the center of his scientific story, John Herron restores a measure of both contingency and hope to U.S. environmental history."--Aaron Sachs, author of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and
the Roots of American Environmentalism