
Savage Dreams
A Journey Into the Landscape Wars of the American West
First published 1994
About this book
n 1851, a war began in what would become Yosemite National Park, a war against the indigenous inhabitants. A century later–in 1951–and a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U.S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site. It was called a nuclear testing program, but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin.
In this foundational book of landscape theory and environmental thinking, Rebecca Solnit explores our national Eden and Armageddon and offers a pathbreaking history of the west, focusing on the relationship between culture and its implementation as politics.
Subjects
Nuclear weaponsDescription and travelTestingIndians of North AmericaEnvironmental aspectsWarsHistoryLandscapeLandscapesIndiansWest (u.s.), description and travelIndians of north america, warsNuclear weapons, testingYosemite national park (calif.)Fiction, general