Changes

Two hundred years ago, instead of being littered with gleaming glass towers and skyscrapers, Manhattan was home to thousands of wandering pigs and livestock. Antebellum Manhattan bore little resemblance to modern Manhattan's gleaming skyline. Catherine McNeur, assistant professor at Portland State University, has written a new book, [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674725093/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0674725093&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=MA232S6F4LDPJ4ZW Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City], published by Harvard University Press that explores a Manhattan filled with shanty towns, farmland and domesticated animals running loose in the streets. Her book examines the battle between upper class Manhattanites and poor New Yorkers over the direction and shape of the city. While poor Manhattanites depended on farming, domesticated animals and recycling the city's garbage for their survival, wealthier residents were deeply concerned about sanitation, the threat of fires and epidemics, and the deepening poverty of the city. If you want to see more of her work, visit [http://www.catherinemcneur.com www.catherinemcneur.com].

[[File: Catherine-145.jpg|thumbnail|Catherine McNeur]]

Ideally, this book will be useful in a range of different courses—whether they focus on the antebellum period, environmental history, urban history, city planning, public health, or the history of capitalism. The majority of environmental histories of America focus on the Progressive Era and beyond, so Taming Manhattan will add to our understanding about what was happening before the Civil War. Antebellum Americans were making dramatic changes to their urban environments, attempting to transform nature alongside the social conditions that seemed to be making cities unsustainable. In the process, they defined what kinds of land uses belonged in an “urban” versus a “rural” setting—definitions we often take for granted, or, alternatively, are working to revise today.

[[Category:Interviews]] [[Category:United States History]] [[Category:Jacksonian America]] [[Category:Urban History]] [[Category:History Interviews]]