Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement | Date: 28 April 2011, 04:00
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Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement
By Neil M. Maher
* Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages: 328
* Publication Date: 2007-12-12
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0195306015
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780195306019
Product Description:
The Great Depression coincided with a wave of natural disasters, including the Dust Bowl and devastating floods of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Recovering from these calamities--and preventing their reoccurrence--was a major goal of the New Deal.
In Nature's New Deal, Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in the emergence of modern environmentalism. Indeed, Roosevelt addressed both the economic and environmental crises by putting Americans to work at conserving natural resources, through the Soil Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (or CCC). The CCC created public landscapes--natural terrain altered by federal work projects--that helped environmentalism blossom after World War II, Maher notes. Millions of Americans devoted themselves to a new vision of conservation, one that went beyond the old model of simply maximizing the efficient use of natural resources, to include the promotion of human health through outdoor recreation, wilderness preservation, and ecological balance. And yet, as Maher explores the rise and development of the CCC, he also shows how the critique of its campgrounds, picnic areas, hiking trails, and motor roads frames the debate over environmentalism to this day.
From the colorful life at CCC camps, to political discussions in the White House and the philosophical debates dating back to John Muir and Frederick Law Olmsted, Nature's New Deal captures a key moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism.
Summary: A Superb Account of a Classic New Deal Organization That Accomplished Much Good
Rating: 5
Neil Maher has written an outstanding account of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a pathbreaking experiment of the New Deal in which young people were brought together in camps to undertake conservation work on the nation's natural resources. They rescued public lands from desolation by planting trees and undertaking other efforts to return the wilderness to a pristine condition. Millions of Americans worked for the CCC at one time or another, and in many instances they did more than just earn a paycheck.
As Maher makes clear, the primary reason for the program in the first place was to help people destitute during the depths of the Great Depression but it accomplished much more. Those who participated in the CCC, he argues, also gained an appreciation for the importance of America's wilderness areas through their CCC experience and became lifelong devotees of ecological efforts. As a group the CCC veterans emerged from these camps dedicated to preservation of the wilds, making efficient use of natural resources, promoting health through outdoor recreation, and stressing ecological balance. The experience of CCC veterans prompted them to become the shock troops of a modern environmental movement that arose later.
Neil Maher's "Nature's New Deal" tells this story with verve and style. It is even more significant at this time in 2009 as the nation enters into the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s.
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