Reviews for By Water and Rail: A History of Lake County, Minnesota

The average rating for By Water and Rail: A History of Lake County, Minnesota based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-18 00:00:00 Tony Braswell well, i have to say, i was initially disappointed by this book because of the expectations i held based on the title. for one, "west" refers here to primarily montana, and specifically to an area called the Missouri Breaks in montana, now the site of the charles m. russell national wildlife refuge. it's not about the west coast or the pacific northwest! it's about prairies (as is also indicated in the title.) secondly, "rewilding," in the broad sweep of mainstream cultural usage, seems to be used sparsely to refer to a number of slightly different movements. my point of reference for this term is "rewilders," folks who are "rewilding" culturally and by tending wild food gardens and replanting native edible and medicinal plants between eastern oregon/washington and the western southwest. in mannings' book, rewilding (although it is not used in the book itself), refers to an ideological, political, and environmental movement to restore wildlife and wildlife habitat for a variety of reasons, many of them economic. ("natural capitalism," he calls it.) so, with that said, once i got past those clarifications, i immensely enjoyed this book. unfortunately, the first two chapters, primarily chapter 2, "aboriginal sins," detail a remarkably and sadly racist and somewhat sexist retelling of colonization and eighteenth and nineteeth century history. despite the book's publishing in 2009, manning still insists on referring to the displaced native peoples inhabiting the western plains as "Indians." he draws almost exclusively on colonizers' accounts rather than native peoples'. he additionally frequently writes off living native americans ("the plains tribes survived into the age of photography and recent memory, so our image of them is the clearest.") he casually perpetuates the stories of native americans as primarily horse thieves and embroiled in violent and self-defeating intertribal conflict. he is unduly sympathetic to the US army ("the army's streak of protectiveness toward both Indians and bisons...[became] a potent political force.") undoubtedly if he had bothered to interview or further research the land-based practices and lifestyles of native tribes pre-colonization (which is to say, prior to the introduction of horses and beginning of the fur trade economy, both of which caused disproportionate overharvesting and damage to the plains ecosystem(s)), he would have found further support for his ultimate argument that the plains ecosystem has co-evolved intelligently to withstand droughts and support some humans and a lot of bison, more effectively than any colonizer-designed agricultural "wildlife farming" plan could ever hope to do. furthermore, manning has failed to take advantage of the resources which offer historical perspectives of native americans and women--resources which help us to see a truer picture of how things happened and to begin to be accountable to and right some of the centuries-old wrongs and continuing violence done to native americans and women in this country. so, on that front, chapter 2 is a flop. but following that, manning's research and reading of the prairie landscape shines through powerfully in his account of the history of the region, effects of the New Deal, politics among governmental agencies, and paradoxes plaguing the conservationist movement. he does an amazing job of detailing the personal relationships and experiences of politicians and influential figures in policymaking--from Henry Lantz to Theodore Roosevelt to FDR to Gifford Pinchot to John Muir--and how their relationships to "wilderness" and "wildlife" came about. i hope to see similarly well-researched books that are as engaging, accessible, and easy to read about other bioregions of the US and further. i'd def recommend it to anyone with relationship to the plains/prairie west, or interest in ranching, the politics of the BLM, history of conservation movement, or the evolution of current tax subsidies (for grazing/corn/wheat). or "sustainable agriculture," which as manning writes, "is an oxymoron."

Review # 2 was written on 2010-02-18 00:00:00 Richard Pinder Manning blithely and in passing makes the racist claim, only marginally pertinent to an argument he was making, that native americans are genetically predisposed to alcoholism and a few lines later makes the preposterous assertion that some U.S. Army generals he names who were ruthless Indian fighters were actually protectors of Indians and the reservations were actually created to protect natives, a gross and silly oversimplification. He sources some of what he says on other topics, but these statements go unsourced. He also claims, based on an observation from a white artist-Catlin (known for over romantic and generally distorted portrayals of what he saw on his trips to the great plains) that native women were slaves to the men. Wow, and that was in the space of about five pages in the first or second chapter. What idealist wouldn't like this idea of buying up the midrivers area of Montana and making it a buffalo range? It is right up there with restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A glorious dream, actually realisable. But such an advocate! one star for the idea, 4 star deductions for having Richard Manning advance the idea.