Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England (Revisiting New England)

From the vantage point of a nearby pond in Newton, Massachusetts, Diana Muir reconstructs an intriguing interpretation of New England's natural history and the people who have lived there since pre-Columbian times. Taking a radically new way to illustrate for general readers the vast interrelationships between natural ecology and human economics, Muir weaves together an imaginative and dramatic account of the changes, massive and subtle, that successive generations of humankind and such animals as sheep and beavers have worked on the land. Her compelling narrative takes us to a New England populated by individuals struggling to make a living from a land not generously endowed by nature. Yankee history, she argues, was a string of ecological crises from which the only escape lay in creating radical new solutions to apparently insurmountable problems. Young men and women coming of age in the 1790s faced a bleak future. In a time when farming was virtually the only occupation, a burgeoning population meant that there was not enough land to go around. Worse, such land as there was had been worn out by generations of careless use. With no prospects and no options, young men like Eli Whitney and Thomas Blanchard might have resigned themselves to a life of poverty. Instead, they started an industrial revolution, the power of which astonished the world. Reflections in Bullough's Pond is history on a grand scale. Drawing on scholarship in fields ranging from archaeology to zoology, Muir offers an exhilarating tour of Paleolithic megafauna, the population crisis faced by New England natives in the pre-Columbian period, the introduction of indoor plumbing, and the invention of the shoe-peg. At the end, we understand ourselves and our world a little better.

A dramatic story of the interplay between environment and economy in New England.

Publishers Weekly

Yankee wealth is the creation of human hands, not of nature--so writes Muir (The Glorious Fourth) in this admirable environmental and economic history, which follows the six New England states from Native Americans' neolithic agriculture through the 19th-century factory boom to its destructive aftermath. When proto-Pequots switched from hunting to agriculture, their cornfields... nourished the population with remarkably little effect on the ecosystem. Europeans introduced change for the worse. Increasing in numbers and in population density, 18th-century whites replaced fields with orchards, beer with hard cider, but nevertheless wore out their land in destructive husbandry. With its depleted soil and few mineral resources, Massachusetts and the states around it would have been destined for poverty, but New England's industrial revolution intervened. Muir shows how local culture and international trade combined to make the space from New Haven to New Hampshire the headquarters of mid-19th-century manufacturers. Demand for water power replaced a network of streams with a wall of dams. Sewage (along with duck farm runoff) devastated the oyster beds that once made the shellfish abundant and cheap. Though some species have made a comeback today, New England tomorrow promises more ecoproblems: the Maine woods are still being logged unsustainably, and too many people drive too many cars. Mountains of research power this book, while Muir's direct yet conversational tone distinguishes it: the titular pond, hard by Muir's house in Newton, Mass., gives the book's lyrical bits a visual center, while her politics tint its prose a shade of green. Serious students of New England's original peoples, watersheds and forests, of its farms, suburbs and cities, or of its near future will seek out Muir's volume. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

"From the vantage point of a nearby pond in Newton, Massachusetts, Diana Muir reconstructs an intriguing interpretation of New England's natural history and the people who have lived there since pre-Columbian times. Taking a radically new way to illustrate for general readers the vast interrelationships between natural ecology and human economics, Muir weaves together an imaginative and dramatic account of the changes, massive and subtle, that successive generations of humankind and such animals as sheep and beavers have worked on the land."--BOOK JACKET. Reflections in Bullough's Pond Contents Introduction 1 From Time Immemorial 2 Improving Nature 3 The Economics of Extermination 4 Salt-Watered Prosperity 5 This Well-Watered Land 6 To the Farthest Port of the Rich East 7 Cobbling a Living 8 Why Lightning Strikes 9 Peddling the Future 10 Machines That Make Machines 11 Acres Cleared and Drained 12 Spinning Cotton into Gold 13 Cities of Steam 14 The Maine Woods 15 Pure Waters 16 Fishing for Profits 17 Terrarium Earth 18 The Third Revolution Epilogue Notes Index The author uses Bullough's Pond in Newton, Massachusetts to trace the history of man's relationship with nature including survival, innovation, exploitation, and conservation