Nature's Laboratory

"Nature's Laboratory promises to resurrect the intellectual debates about nature that swirled through Chicago in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Social and economic strife sparked these conversations, and debaters turned to the environment for answers to the problems caused by the city. Using an impressive array of sources, from sociological and workplace studies to poetry and architectural design, Browning argues that thinkers returned again and again to the concept of urban nature. This book will appeal to intellectual, environmental, and urban historians, as well as historians of capitalism and Chicagophiles."

"Well-researched, incisively argued, and beautifully written, Browning delivers a dazzling and pathbreaking synthesis of environmental, urban, intellectual, and labor histories that sheds new light on familiar figures and stories—not just in Chicago, 'nature's metropolis,' but in the nation as a whole."

"In a move that turns Cronon's Nature's Metropolis inside out, Browning deftly demonstrates that Chicago's labor and intellectual histories are best read through the environment. From Haymarket through the Memorial Day Massacre, Chicago's reformers, intellectuals, and activists turned to the natural world for authority and for consolation, variably understanding and experiencing nature as a source of knowledge, metaphor, and control."

"In this vivid account of Chicago, Elizabeth Browning illuminates the push-and-pull between city and country, a set of entanglements brought to life through the ideas of charismatic activists, writers, and intellectuals like Lucy Parsons, John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Richard Wright. From the Chicago School of Sociology to the "green" movement, Chicago was at the heart of debates about nature and culture, about the ecology of the urban experience, about a fundamental need to live among others. Browning has given us a major contribution to how we understand Chicago's central place in the fields of environmental, intellectual, and urban history."

"Nature's Laboratory offers a sophisticated and nuanced history of the meanings of race and nature in American urban development. Deploying rich research, vibrant prose, and profound—often surprising—analysis, Browning interrogates the intersections of environment, race, labor, and city life in the long twentieth century. This is a vital contribution."

"Beautifully written, Nature's Laboratory represents a tremendous amount of research and includes many evocative vignettes."