'An accessible history examining how environmental policy has been shaped in the United States, from a perspective spanning the first settlement of the continent to the world of today. It is an excellent source for understanding how legislation, regulation, and politics have intertwined to produce the responses we have seen to environmental concerns over time. The book offers a framework for understanding the modern political landscape, and how intense polarization has developed over matters of seeming vital importance to the health and wellbeing of everyone. Recognizing how and why these attitudes came about, the author argues, can help them to be overcome.' David G. Anderson, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee and Project Director, Paleoindian Database of the Americas

Frank T. Manheim is Affiliate Professor and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University.

1. An Introduction

2. North American Indians and Land Use before European Colonization

3. Colonial History up to 1829

4. The 19th Century

5. The 20th Century up to 1969

6. The Environmental Revolution of the 1970s

7. Other Developments in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Reagan Countermovement

8. Global Climate Change: George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton-Al Gore

9. George W. Bush and Barack Obama

10. Upheaval: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Trump 2.0

11. Comparisons Between US And European Law Making and Renewable Energy Progress

12. Policy Issues and Discussion

13. Pathways to Progress

Afterword