"Natural States reconstructs the environmental imagination from public commentary, legislative records, and other documents. Contrasting preservationist, romantic, pastoral, nostalgic, and utilitarian concepts of nature, the authors demonstrate how tensions from competing ideals sustained the environmental movement, contributed to its successes, but also limited its achievements. They provide unique detail about the development of the environmental movement in the years preceding the publication of Silent Spring, and make important contributions to our understanding of American environmentalism as both a local and national movement."--Jacket.