University of Georgia Press, 1996

If environmental history has one pervading characteristic, it is discontinuity. Climatic and geographic determinism are long dead, and generalizations to replace them are hard to come by, especially as the science of ecology grows increasingly relativistic. With a few notable exceptions- Alfred W. Crosby’s work on the consequences of European expansion domes to mind- the broad brush stroke has been less common that the detailed miniature, and the case study remains the most typical form for the environmental historian, with localism and irony as its binding forces.