Cronon, William : University of Wisconsin-Madison

William Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent book is Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, which won the Bancroft Prize in 1992.

"Changes in the Land exemplifies, and realizes, the promise of ecological history with stunning effect. Setting his sights squarely on the well-worn terrain of colonial New England, [Cronon] fashions a story that is fresh, ingenious, compelling and altogether important. His approach is at once vividly descriptive and profoundly analytic."

--John Demos, The New York Times Book Review

"A superb achievement: Cronon has changed the terms of historical discourse regarding colonial New England."

--Wilcomb E. Washburn, director of the Office of American Studies, Smithsonian Institution

"A cogent, sophisticated, and balanced study of Indian-white contact. Gracefully written, subtly argued, and well informed, it is a work whose implications extend far beyond colonial New England."

--Richard White, Michigan State University

"This is ethno-ecological history at its best . . . American colonial history will never be the same after this path-breaking, exciting book."

--Wilbur R. Jacobs, University of California, Santa Barbara

"A brilliant performance, from which all students of early American history will profit."

--Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Web Site, August, 2002

By "appraising evidence that ranges from fossil pollen counts to Puritan court documents, William Cronon, a Yale historian, {seeks to} explain how the farming practices and commercial instincts of the early English Colonists destroyed the region's flourishing forest habitat -- and doomed New England's native Indians with it." (Newsweek) Bibliography. Index.