A great deal of arrogance surrounds this late-twentieth-century attitude toward the environment, and a great deal of history as well. What started as a research paper at Brandeis University expanded into a book that explores the role of the Industrial Revolution in this aggressive stance toward the natural world. The transformation of nature is at least as old as our presence as a species on this planet. But the advent of the industrial age marked a shift in humankind's relations with the earth. Steinberg concerns himself mainly with describing this shift as it was felt in New England, to journey back to a time when the task of subduing nature was full of hard-fought battles and much less arrogance.