Review of This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent

A Natural History of American Dissent, reveals a tradition of rebellion with roots that run deep into the earth.This book's structure and literary style challenge the conventions of environmental and political history.It contains four non-traditional historical essays about social dissenters and the trees surrounding them during the nineteenth century.Within the stories that Miller unearths, he argues that by looking to the trees one can better understand the tradition of nineteenth-century dissent, which was smothered by westward expansion, environmental degradation, political violence, and institutionalized racism.With this book, Miller also adds to the scholarly literature of intentional communities by arguing that communal utopias served as a viable political and environmental alternative in nineteenth-century society.This Radical Land started as Miller's Ph.D. dissertation in history at Cornell University.While in graduate school, Miller belonged to a writers' group titled, "Historians are Writers!", which espoused "the principle that literature and academic writing should not be antithetical propositions