Landscapes of Conflict

"This is, make no mistake about it, an important book. Oregon faces massive land-use and environmental issues, and this history of how we really got to where we are is relevant and predictive. Those who control how Oregon will go in the future need to read this book thoroughly.And that includes the people who have the most power..the voters."

"There is much to admire in [this] book: careful scholarship, brisk writing, and an obvious love and respect for Oregon's history and people. And many fascinating stories..Historians and environmentalists will be elaborating his themes, working from the borders of his achievement, for some time to come."

"[Landscapes of Conflict] is impressive, a work valuable for its sweep, relevant to many current concerns, and important for the understanding it can provide even to those with interests focused on areas far distant from Oregon."

"Robbins brings a critical and moral clarity to his research and analysis that turns the specifics of one state's environmental conflicts into a synecdoche for broader struggles with modernity, capitalism, and ecological sustainability. He also adds significantly to a growing body of broad-minded, theoretically-informed scholarship about the Pacific Northwest, a region whose historiography has in the past tended toward either the provincially myopic or the gushingly exceptionalist. Robbins makes the case, in other words, that Oregon matters."

"This excellent book and its earlier companion volume define a new and important approach to America's environmental history—-from a state rather than a national perspective. It is broadly conceived, well researched, engagingly told and filled with a passion for place that the reader cannot help but share."

"Landscapes of Conflict offers a comprehensive study of the complex political and environmental policies affecting Northwest water, forest and agricultural policies from 1941 to the present . Robbins' in—depth analyses are sound, his insights keen, his research impeccable."

"This overview of environmental change in Oregon since 1940 is a masterful work…one of the clearest and clear—eyed portraits of a modern state in the West that has been written."

"Landscapes of Conflict is the second volume of what is unquestionably the finest environmental history anyone has yet written for a single state—-and since Oregon has helped lead the nation in its response to environmental problems, while also exemplifying those problems within its own boundaries, Robbins's book will be of interest to readers far beyond the Pacific Northwest."