I never knew that moles were adorable until I read Moletown by Torben Kuhlmann. (You may remember him from such posts as this one or this one.) I also had no idea that they would work as a perfect stand-in for humans. Kuhlmann once again knocks it right out of the park with this story of urbanization and industrialization. It's a sobering look at the way humanity has taken a seed of an idea which seemed perfectly innocent (or inevitable) and turned it into something suffocating and terrible. Yes, the advent of the modern age has done much to improve the lives of humans but it has also destroyed landscapes and wiped out entire species. Once again, this is a great way to open up a discussion with kids about a topic which they most likely only cover in relation to the atrocities inflicted upon Native Americans (if they even go into detail about that). It's so much more than that and I think it's important that kids start to think beyond their own small worlds. Of course, you have to decide if you think this is age appropriate but I think it would be good for second graders at the very least. 10/10 for awesome illustrations and a really awesome storyline that is sure to get little people (and the adults in their lives) thinking.

This was Steinberg’s dissertation; his advisors were David Fischer, Morton Horwitz, and Donald Worster. Steinberg’s thesis is that “industrial capitalism is not only and economic system, but a system of ecological relations as well.” (11) This idea goes beyond the obvious (but important) recognition that environment constrains social and economic choices, towards a more subtle discussion of how “the natural world came to represent new sources of energy and raw materials…perceived more and more as a set of inputs.” Steinberg mentions Cronon and Merchant in this context, but the thrust of his argument develops Horwitz’s theme of “an instrumental conception” of both resources and “law that sanctioned the maximization of economic growth.” (16) A critical issue in Horwitz, which Steinberg picks up, is that this sneaky institutionalization of common law and the attitudes toward ownership and the public and private sectors that spring from it has distributional consequences. So the point is not only that over time it became “commonly assumed, even expected, that water should be tapped, controlled, and dominated in the name of progress,” but that the rewards of this control legitimately belong to the few, to the exclusion of the many.Steinberg’s narrative of the beginning of textile milling in Massachusetts calls attention not only to the contested nature of all the changes the mills tried to make to the flow and control of rivers like the Charles, but also to how much these changes owed not to free competition in the market, but to government interference through the courts. Despite the regular complaints of area farmers, by 1795 people in the Charles valley believed “their natural rights stolen from them, and their best property at the mercy of one or two Millers, still the luck favorites & likely to remain, so long as the rage for Factory at every place, whether others sink or swim, continues the rage of Government.” (37) Along the way, Steinberg’s story brushes up against several interesting people (Nathaniel Ames, Robert Owen, Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens), whose personal reactions to what they saw in the Charles and Merrimack valleys would have added an interesting dimension to the account.Steinberg continues the story with accounts of the Boston Associates’ campaign to control Lake Winnepissiogee, the destruction of fisheries and the capitalists’ attempt to reintroduce and manage what was formerly a common good, and the problem of industrial and urban pollution in the rivers controlled by the industrialists. Each of these topics have been expanded by others, along the lines Steinberg suggests. The only flaw in the book, for me, is the Thoreau-ian wrapper Steinberg adds at the beginning and end. Clearly Thoreau would have been horrified by what he saw, but I don’t think Steinberg makes a strong case that Thoreau represents any type of viable alternative. At the end, Steinberg admits that “greater command over…nature in general, had its positive points.” But, he concludes, “this aggressive, manipulative posture toward the natural world [is] a problem that penetrates to the core of modern American culture.” (271) This conclusion steps beyond the scope of the book, and although Steinberg may have felt that it was implied by his approach, it is not a natural end to the story and requires either a leap of faith or a prior agreement and understanding that makes the book’s very valuable argument weaker.