Focusing on the United States and Germany, this book takes a comparative approach in examining environmental history. It also considers questions facing environmental historians - How can we historicise nature? Is nature a historical actor? How have human beings interacted with nature and what patterns have emerged?

"Historians and Nature" considers five cutting-edge questions facing environmental historians today. How can we historicise nature? Is nature a historical actor? How have human beings interacted with nature and what patterns have emerged? How do we understand the ecology of urban spaces? What is the history of environmental diplomacy? Focusing on the United States and Germany, the book takes a comparative approach in examining environmental history. The authors draw on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including history, cultural studies, human geography, biology and ecology. Case studies include Native Americans and their relationship to the environment, the California Gold Rush and the Coal Fields of the Ruhr Basin in the nineteenth century, the controversial building of dikes in seventeenth-century Germany, cleaning up modern cities, and the Greenpeace movement and the development of international environmental activism in the 1970s.

Notes on Contributors
Introduction, Ursula Lehmkuhl
Public Address
1. Money versus public affairs Reflections on a better balance between public and private goods, Ernst Ulrich von Weizscker, MP
PART 1: The Historicization of Nature
2.Historicizing Nature: Time and Space in German and American Environmental History, Ursula Lehmkuhl
3. Ecologics/ecosophy: the event of the city, Hanjo Berressem
Comment: Christof Mauch , Mark Hberlein, Michael Williams
part 2: Nature as Actor: Social and Economic Consequences of Environmental Catastrophes and Epidemics
4. Native Americans, History, and the Environment, Christian F. Feest
5. Nature in Conflict. Disputes surrounding the dike in 17th century Northern Frisia as a window into an Early Modern coastal society, Marie Luisa Allemeyer
Comment: Klaus-Georg Wey , Stanely W. Trible, Franz Mauelshagen
PART 3: The Interaction of People and Nature
6. Mercurial Nature: The California Gold Country and the Coal Fields of the Ruhr Basin, 1850-1900, Andrew Isenberg
7. Perceptions of Space and Nature in 19th Century America, Claudia Schnurmann
Comment: Marc Cioc, Keri Lewis, Nils Freytag
PART 4: The Ecology of Urban Places
8. The Natural Space of Modernity: A Transatlantic Perspective on (Urban) Environmental History, Dorothee Brantz
9. Cleaning up the Urban Landscape, Bernd Herrmann
Comment: Andrew Hurley , James T. Lemon
PART 5: Environmental Diplomacy
10. The Potential and the Reality of Safeguarding the Environment by American Diplomacy: A Brief Survey of the 20th Century, Kurk Dorsey
11. Greenpeace and the Development of International Environmental Activism in the 1970s, Frank Zelko
Comment: Kristine Kern, James Morton Turner, David Simon
Select Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Places