logo
Crononauthor

William Cronon

4.50

Average rating

1

Books

William Cronon (born September 11, 1954, in New Haven, Connecticut) is an environmental historian and the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was president of the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2012. He was born in Connecticut.

Cronon received a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976. He received a Master of Arts in 1979 and a Master of Philosophy in 1980, both in American history from Yale University. He received a Doctor of Philosophy in British urban and economic history from the Jesus College of the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1981. He received a Doctor of Philosophy in American history from Yale University in 1990.

In July 1985, Cronon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Cronon serves on the board of directors for The Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group. He has been a member of the Wilderness Society since 1995, and as of 2014, he served as vice chair of the organization's governing council.

Cronon is best known for his first book, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983), based on a seminar paper he wrote for his Yale adviser Edmund Sears Morgan. First, he proposed that how cultures conceptualize property and ownership is a significant factor in economies and ecosystems. Secondly, unlike most historians, he documented that Native Americans actively intervened in and shaped the ecosystems in which they lived.

His book Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991) "is credited with having radically widened many environmental historians' gaze beyond such things as forests and public lands to include cities and what Cronon calls the 'elaborate and intimate linkages' between city and country." Cronon says that Chicago and capitalism fundamentally transformed the open Midwestern countryside. In one chapter, he details how grain became a standardized commodity.

At first, farmers sold it in sacks with the farm's family name stamped on it; as a commodity, it was sold in bulk as a standardized good stored in silos according to grade. The book won the 1992 Bancroft Prize and the 1993 George Perkins Marsh Prize and was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for History.

In his book Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (1995) and his essay "The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," published in The New York Times (August 13, 1995), Cronon traced the idea of wilderness throughout American history. Cronon was also featured in Ken Burns's 2009 documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea.

Best author’s book

pagesback-cover
4.5

Changes in the Land

Michael Pollan
Read