Nature and history in modern Italy / edited by Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall ; with a foreword by Donald Worster
- Published:
- Athens : Ohio University Press, [2010]
- Copyright Date:
- ©2010
- Physical Description:
- xvi, 295 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.
- Additional Creators:
- Armiero, Marco, 1966- and Hall, Marcus, 1959-
- Series:
- Contents:
- Il bel paese : an introduction / Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall -- Foundations -- The distinctive character of Italian environmental history / Piero Bevilacqua -- Upside-down landscapes : seismicity and seismic disasters in Italy / Emanuela Guidoboni -- Moving ground : Vesuvius and the Nola mudslides of the nineteenth century / Walter Palmieri -- Environmental imperialism in Sardinia : pesticides and politics in the struggle against malaria / Marcus Hall -- Commons and forests -- The decline of the commons and the environmental balance in early modern Italy / Gabriella Corona -- Forest visions in early modern Italy / Bruno Vecchio -- Environmental heritage of a past cultural landscape : alder woods in the upper Aveto Valley of the northwestern Apennines / Roberta Cevasco -- Act locally, think nationally : a brief history of access rights and environmental conflicts in Fascist Italy / Wilko Graf von Hardenberg -- Pollution, industry, and urban environment -- Dealing with industrial pollution in Italy, 1880-1940 / Simone Neri Serneri -- Petrochemical modernity in Sicily / Salvatore Adorno -- The Seveso disaster legacy / Laura Centemeri -- Landscape, culture, and environmentalism -- A "natural" capitalism : water and the making of the Italian industrial landscape / Stefania Barca -- Nationalizing the mountains : natural and political landscapes in World War I / Marco Armiero -- Nature preservation and protection in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy, 1880-1950 / Luigi Piccioni.
- Summary:
- ""Anyone seeking a more complicated portrait of modern Italy will find this book a superb guide. It showcases the work of long-acclaimed masters along with rising new talents. Its notes are a gold mine of further reading suggestions and demonstrate how well researched these essays are. The writing is clear and vigorous. The scope is comprehensive. Pack this book along with Baedeker's Italy or the latest edition of Fodor's, and you will have a compelling new perspective on a land that has won the hearts of so many people around the world. You will learn much more about what environmental historians do, but also you will see far more clearly what humans and nature have been doing on this narrow, mountainous, and very special place on earth."-from the foreword by Donald Worster, author of The Wealth of Nature and Dust Bowl" ""There is currently no coherent synthetic history of Italian environmental particularities such as earthquakes, landslides, deforestation, the early established but inadequate areas of preserved 'wilderness, the wild zones of massive toxic pollution, and the distinctive landscape symbolism of a late-unifying nation-state. This book is to be welcomed as much for its pioneering quality as for the intellectual strengths and empirical interest of its various chapters?'-John Agnew, author of Places and Politics in Modern Italy" "Despite the many ruins dating back to the Romans and the Etruscans, Italy is one of the youngest and most unstable physical landscapes on earth. The still active Vesuvius and the powerful earthquake that devastated L'Aquila in central Italy in 2009 are constant reminders of Italy's history of frequent tremors, devastating landslides, raging floods, and fatal diseases. It was the Italians who invented the word "malaria." Is Italy Il Bel Paesethe beautiful countryworld renowned for its scenery, arts, and cuisine? Or is it a land whose beauty has been cursed by calamity, greed, and pollution? The fifteen essays in Nature and History in Modern Italy investigate that nation's long experience in managing domesticated rather than wild natures and offer insight into the conflicting visions of a unique hybrid landscape fashioned by history as well as by nature." "Marco Armiero is Senior Researcher at the Italian National Research Council and a Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies, Universitat Aut=noma de Barcelona. He has published extensively on Italian environmental history and edited Views from the South: Environmental Stories from the Mediterranean World." "Marcus Hall is Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at the University of Zurich. His several writings about the past and prospect of land management focus on Italy as a case study, including Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration, winner of the Downing Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subject(s):
- Landscapes—Social aspects—Italy—History
- Nature—Effect of human beings on—Italy—History
- Human ecology—Italy—History
- Pollution—Italy—History
- Urbanization—Environmental aspects—Italy—History
- Environmentalism—Italy—History
- Italy—Environmental conditions
- Italy—History—19th century
- Italy—History—20th century
- Italy—Social conditions
- ISBN:
- 9780821419151 (hardcover : alk. paper)
0821419153 (hardcover : alk. paper)
9780821419168 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0821419161 (pbk. : alk. paper)
9780821443477 (electronic)
082144347X (electronic) - Bibliography Note:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
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