Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation - Softcover

"This insightful and lucid book combines social with environmental history, enriching both. . . . Timely, eloquent, and provocative, Crimes against Nature illuminates contemporary struggles, especially in the West, over our environment."—Alan Taylor, author of William Cooper's Town

"A compelling new interpretation of early conservation history in the United States. . . . Powerfully argued and beautifully written, this book could hardly be more relevant to the environmental challenges we face today."—William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

"What a powerful and yet subtle tale of the fraught encounter between the conservationists' desire to 'engineer' wilderness with the property regime of the modern state and the unique, local, 'moral ecologies' of those who resisted! Rarely has this level of originality, close reasoning, and historical texture been brought into such harmony while preserving the whiff of lived experience."—James C. Scott, author of Seeing Like a State

Karl Jacoby is a professor in the Department of History and in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. He is the author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History.