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In The Big Muddy, the first long-term environmental history of the Mississippi, Christopher Morris offers a brilliant tour across five centuries as he illuminates the interaction between people and the landscape, from early hunter-gatherer bands to present-day industrial and post-industrial society. Morris shows that when Hernando de Soto arrived at the lower Mississippi Valley, he found an incredibly vast wetland, forty thousand
square miles of some of the richest, wettest land in North America, deposited there by the big muddy river that ran through it. But since then much has changed, for the river and for the surrounding valley. Indeed,
by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly drying. Morris shows how centuries of increasingly intensified human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, and levee construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. He outlines the damage done by the introduction of foreign species, such as the Argentine nutria, which escaped into the wild and are now busy eating up Louisiana's wetlands. And he critiques the most monumental change in the lower Mississippi Valley--the reconstruction
of the river itself, largely under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. Valley residents have been paying the price for these human interventions, most visibly with the disaster that followed
Hurricane Katrina. Morris also describes how valley residents have been struggling to reinvigorate the valley environment in recent years--such as with the burgeoning catfish and crawfish industries--so that they may once again live off its natural abundance.Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered bending of
natural environments to human purposes.
In The Big Muddy, the first long-term environmental history of the Mississippi, Christopher Morris offers a brilliant tour across five centuries as he illuminates the interaction between people and the landscape, from early hunter-gatherer bands to present-day industrial and post-industrial society. Morris shows that when Hernando de Soto arrived at the lower Mississippi Valley, he found an incredibly vast wetland, forty thousand
square miles of some of the richest, wettest land in North America, deposited there by the big muddy river that ran through it. But since then much has changed, for the river and for the surrounding valley. Indeed,
by the 1890s, the valley was rapidly drying. Morris shows how centuries of increasingly intensified human meddling--including deforestation, swamp drainage, and levee construction--led to drought, disease, and severe flooding. He outlines the damage done by the introduction of foreign species, such as the Argentine nutria, which escaped into the wild and are now busy eating up Louisiana's wetlands. And he critiques the most monumental change in the lower Mississippi Valley--the reconstruction
of the river itself, largely under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. Valley residents have been paying the price for these human interventions, most visibly with the disaster that followed
Hurricane Katrina. Morris also describes how valley residents have been struggling to reinvigorate the valley environment in recent years--such as with the burgeoning catfish and crawfish industries--so that they may once again live off its natural abundance.Morris concludes that the problem with Katrina is the problem with the Amazon Rainforest, drought and famine in Africa, and fires and mudslides in California--it is the end result of the ill-considered bending of
natural environments to human purposes.
1. Valley of Mud
2. Knee Deep in Water and Snakes
3. Rice
4. The Rise of New Orleans and the Fall of Natchez
5. Consolidation, Transformation, Conservation
6. King Cotton Meets Big Muddy
7. The Cotton Kingdom's Edges Made and Unmade
8. Engineering the River of Empire
9. Symptoms of a Pathological Landscape
10. Cotton, Chemicals, Catfish, Crawfish
11. Nature's Return: Hurricane Katrina and the Future of the Big
Muddy
Christopher Morris is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of Becoming Southern: The Evolution of a Way of Life, Vicksburg and Warren County, Mississippi, 1770-1860.
"[An] ambitious and cleanly argued environmental history of the
lower Mississippi Valley..."--Historian
"The history of the Mississippi valley is the story of a constant
tug-of-war between water and land. Morris has aptly told the
stories that are often on the margin of the river, and have been on
the margin of histories of the valley. In doing this, he has
provided much-needed contexts for our endless fascination with the
Mississippi River."--Journal of Historical Geography
"Christopher Morris has molded a thoroughly researched, smartly
organized, and thoughtfully argued book....Morris deploys human
stories and graceful prose to maintain the flow, making his an
accessible study....The Big Muddy also comes in a compact size,
ideal for adopting for a course, as this reviewer has
done."--Journal of American Studies
"Christopher Morris has written an important book that is both
history and advocacy. There is much to praise in this book, and it
is certain to win acclaim and recognition for its
author."--Arkansas Historical Quarterly
"Elegantly written, The Big Muddy is a sweeping environmental
history of a famous river told with an eye toward the relationship
between water and land."--Journal of American History
"This environmental history of the Mississippi River Valley has a
thesis that Morris explores as it relates to different peoples and
their technologies, ranging from Native Americans and Spanish and
French explorers to current residents in post-Hurrican Katrina
times. This is a multidisciplinary history; the extensive endnotes
show that Morris did his homework thoroughly. Highly
recommended."--CHOICE
"Impressive in its chronological scope, thoughtfully covering five
centuries of interactions between people and water, Morris's
skilled and subtle work of environmental history shows how
river-based ecological systems embed, underwrite, and challenge
shore-bound human institutions. Demonstrating the possibility of
writing a history of transnational scope while staying in the same
place, The Big Muddy follows Spanish, French, and U.S.
actors."--Ohio
Valley History
"The Big Muddy makes a powerful argument that nature is trying to
tell us 'something about the way we understand the natural
environment and our place within it.'"--American Scientist
Online
"A story as sprawling and powerful as the river it describes. In
the wake of 2011's epic flooding, this volume could not be more
timely."--Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough
New Planet
"Thoroughly researche, tightly written, and uncommonly well
illustrated....Morris is at his best here."--Environmental
History
"Few authors have so elegantly and succinctly merged human history
and natural history as Christopher Morris does in The Big Muddy,
his environmental history of the Mississippi River. Eschewing easy
answers and simple explanations, he makes clear what is at stake in
how humans live in nature."--Richard White, author of
Railroaded
"Chris Morris has written a thoroughly engaging account of human
encounters with the Mississippi River. He penetrates and clarifies
the complex environmental history of this murky torrent while
offering up a flood of fresh insights. As much as any recent
history I've seen, this work not only narrates the past, but speaks
with a powerful voice to the future of the lower river valley and
its inhabitants."--Craig E. Colten, author of An Unnatural
Metropolis:
Wresting New Orleans from Nature
"More than any other book written so far, The Big Muddy forces us
to understand how stubborn efforts to dry wetlands in the
Mississippi Valley not only caused vexing environmental problems
but also shaped social and economic relationships in troublesome
ways. A society plagued by inequality and instability can learn
plenty from Christopher Morris's skillful documentation of why we
must more wisely adapt to nature's irrepressible mixing of land
and
water."--Daniel Usner, Vanderbilt University
"Christopher Morris's The Big Muddy is an extremely important new
addition to our ever growing environmental history library. It's a
tragic story about how the Mississippi River has been abused for
centuries. Morris is a superb researcher and talented writer.
Highly recommended!"--Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge:
Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
"What is remarkable and fresh about this scholarly study of the
Mississippi in the longue duree is its comprehensiveness, density,
and nuance, as well as the fresh research upon which it is based.
It is a sturdy, grand, and at times stunning achievement,
deeply
rooted in substantial interdisciplinary research and brimming with
insight."--American Historical Review
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