"Like Darwin's Origin of Species, Marsh's Man and Nature marked the inception of a truly modern way of looking at the world. Marsh's ominous warnings inspired reforestation, watershed management, soil conservation, and nature protection in his day and ours.

David Lowenthal offers fresh insight, from new sources, into Marsh's career and shows his relevance today, in a book which has its roots in but wholly supercedes Lowenthal's earlier biography published in 1958. Marsh's devotion to the repair of nature, to the concerns of working people, to women's rights, and to historical stewardship resonate more than ever. His Vermont birthplace is now a national park chronicling American conservation, and the crusade he launched is now global."

George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation, University of Washington Press, 2000

Lowenthal, an American professor emeritus of geography at University College London, edited the centenary reprint of Marsh's Man and Nature. He is also the author of The Past is a Foreign Country, West Indian Societies, The Heritage Crusade, and The Spoils of History.

An Excerpt from George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation

"The life of George Perkins Marsh spanned most of the nineteenth century. On few aspects of his era did he leave no mark. Lawyer, farmer, manufacturer, congressman, diplomat par excellence, Marsh was the broadest scholar of his day. He was at home in twenty languages, became America's prime master of Scandinavian and English literature and linguistics, made signal advances in comparative philology, helped to found and foster the Smithsonian Institution, spearheaded corporate railroad curbs, and irrigation control, was a wonted arbiter of public taste in art and architecture, shone fresh light on the history of everyday life. Above all, his ecological insights pioneered alertness to human impacts on the earth, inspiring conservation zeal in his day and in ours. Next to Darwins On the Origin of Species, Marsh's Man and Nature of 1864 was the most influential text of its time to link culture with nature, science with society, landscape with history."