A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States

An engaging, critical synthesis of 20 years of new scholarship in environmental and labor history, A People's History of Environmentalism tells a new story of the emergence and power of environmentalism as a movement forged by common people in defense of their lives and livelihoods. Countering previous arguments that environmentalism began in post-World War II middle-class suburbs, Montrie redefines environmentalism as a grass-roots, working class response to industrialization and urbanization dating from the early 19th century. From the start, this movement included workers' resistance to elite attempts to control nature both for profit and for upper-class leisure. Montrie narrates the growth of working-class environmentalism and its successes and failures from the textile mills of New England, to the Chicago streets around Hull House, to automobile plants of Michigan, to the coal mines of Appalachia, and to the agricultural fields of California, with other stops along the way. This detailed but accessible book offers a forceful new interpretation of American environmentalism and rewrites the narrative of the modern environmental movement to include the crucial role of working class men and women in the fight for a healthy environment--Sanford Lakoff