Nature's Laboratory Environmental Thought and Labor Radicalism in Chicago, 1886-1937

In Nature's Laboratory, Elizabeth Grennan Browning argues that Chicago―a city characterized by rapid growth, severe labor unrest, and its position as a gateway to the West―offers the clearest lens for analyzing the history of the intellectual divide between countryside and city in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. By examining both the material and intellectual underpinnings of Gilded Age and Progressive Era environmental theories, Browning shows how Chicago served as an urban laboratory where public intellectuals and industrial workers experimented with various strains of environmental thinking to resolve conflicts between capital and labor, between citizens and their governments, and between immigrants and long-term residents.
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