Contents -- Foreword: Environmental History Comes of Age by William Cronon -- Land of Lincoln -- 1. Satan in the Land: Nature, the Supernatural, and Disorder in Colonial New England -- 2. By the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: Declaring American Independence -- 3. King Cotton: The Cotton Plant and Southern Slavery -- 4. Nature's Nobleman: Abraham Lincoln and the Improvement of America -- 5. The Nature of Gettysburg: Environmental History and the Civil War -- 6. Iron Horses: Nature and the Building of the First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad -- 7. Atomic Sublime: Toward a Natural History of the Bomb -- 8. The Road to Brown v. Board: An Environmental History of the Color Line -- 9. It's a Gas: The United States and the Oil Shock of 1973-1974 -- Paths That Beckon -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Illustration Credits -- Index.