The White Horse Press
Paradise Blues: Travels through American Environmental History
- Christof Mauch (author)
- Lucy Jones (translator)
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| Title | Paradise Blues |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Travels through American Environmental History |
| Contributor | Christof Mauch (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.3197/63842832816954.book |
| Landing page | https://www.whpress.co.uk/publications/2023/06/05/paradise-blues/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 |
| Copyright | Christof Mauch |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Publication place | Winwick, Cambridgeshire, UK |
| Published on | 2024-01-15 |
| ISBN | 978-1-912186-78-5 (Paperback) |
| 978-1-912186-79-2 (PDF) | |
| Short abstract | Paradise Blues is an unconventional history of the United States of America, an unusual travel guide that follows and renders visible the country’s paths of nature, history and civilisation. Christof Mauch is a leading German historian who has spent many years in the US and in this book he attempts, from a European perspective, to grasp the diversity of American culture and the transformation of its environments, combining travel reporting with nature writing, personal observation and philosophical reflection. Mauch seeks the familiar in unfamiliar places and the curious in places that seem common and well-known. |
| Long abstract | Paradise Blues is an unconventional history of the United States of America, an unusual travel guide that follows and renders visible the country’s paths of nature, history and civilisation. Christof Mauch is a leading German historian who has spent many years in the US and in this book he attempts, from a European perspective, to grasp the diversity of American culture and the transformation of its environments, combining travel reporting with nature writing, personal observation and philosophical reflection. Mauch seeks the familiar in unfamiliar places and the curious in places that seem common and well-known. The journey begins in tiny Wiseman, Alaska and the final portrait is of Portland, Oregon, famously America’s most sustainable city. In between, Mauch’s wanderings in space and time, his serendipitous and planned encounters with places and people, bring to light the tension and ambivalence in most Americans’ attitudes towards their often-perilous environment, the intertwining throughout history of valuation, conservation and destruction. Interactions between human beings and the environment have settled like sediment down the centuries and may be read in the present – in the form of landscapes and collective memory, in bodies of water and the earth’s strata, tree rings and human cells. One of Mauch’s dominant themes is that the grand hopes and bitter disappointments of the American paradise are not equally distributed – the blues is the voice of the dispossessed and disadvantaged; and here environmental injustice toward Black, Indigenous and other marginalised people is a recurring and haunting motif. This is a book of melancholia and hope – Mauch exposes the beauty, the imperilment, at times the wreckage, of the American environment. And he shows us that, more powerfully than abstract ideas, governmental edicts or technological forces, stories reveal the infinite discoveries to be made in humans’ relationship to nature – in beautiful landscapes where danger lurks as well as in visions and behaviours that change the world and ecosystems. Above all, stories demonstrate that where we come from and where we are going are intimately connected and therefore nothing has to remain as it is. The stories told in Paradise Blues demonstrate that vulnerabilities and pressures are almost always political constructions and, for that reason, it must be possible to deconstruct them. |
| Print length | 298 pages |
| Language | English (Translated_into) |
| Dimensions | 152 x 229 mm | 5.98" x 9.02" (Paperback) |
| Media | 49 illustrations |
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Contents
Prologue
(pp. 7–10)- Christof Mauch
Wiseman, Alaska: 'The Happiest Civilization’
(pp. 13–39)- Christof Mauch
Malibu, California: Stranger than Paradise
(pp. 41–61)- Christof Mauch
Memphis, Tennessee: Mississippi Blues
(pp. 63–89)- Christof Mauch
St Thomas, Nevada: The Ghosts Return
(pp. 91–115)- Christof Mauch
Dodge City, Kansas: The Windy Wild West
(pp. 117–143)- Christof Mauch
- Christof Mauch
Walt Disney World, Florida: At Least Two Natures
(pp. 173–205)- Christof Mauch
Portland, Oregon: Travelling through America’s Green
(pp. 207–236)- Christof Mauch
Afterword
(pp. 237–247)- Christof Mauch
Contributors
Christof Mauch
(author)Chair of American Cultural History at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Director at Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
Christof Mauch studied at Tübingen University and King’s College London and majored in German literature, theology, philosophy and history. He received his Dr.phil. in German literature from Tübingen and his Dr. phil. habil. in Modern History from the University of Cologne. From 1999 to 2007, Mauch headed the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. He has been Chair of American Cultural History at LMU Munich since 2007; and Director of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at LMU since 2009. Mauch was the first Chairperson (now: President) of the Board of Directors of the International Consortium for Environmental History Organizations, ICEHO (2009–2011) and he served as Vice President and President of the European Society for Environmental History (2009–2013). In 2013 he was named Honorary Professor and Senior Fellow at the Center for Ecological History of Renmin University in China. Mauch has been a visiting professor at universities in Australia, Austria, Canada, India and Poland. In 2020 he was the Carl Schurz Memorial Professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA). He has received numerous international awards for his scholarly contributions and engagement, including the Distinguished Career in Public Environmental History Award from the American Society for Environmental History, the Teaching Innovation Award from the LMU Munich, and the Planetary Award from the Institute for Future Competences. Mauch has authored, edited or co-edited over forty books in the fields of Modern German Literature; US, German and transatlantic history; and the environmental humanities. Paradise Blues is his most personal book, drawing on his travels through the United States over a period of fifteen years.