This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent

“The American people sees itself advance across the wilderness, draining swamps, straightening rivers, peopling the solitude, and subduing nature,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835.That’s largely how we still think of nineteenth-century America today: a country expanding unstoppably, bending the continent’s natural bounty to the national will, heedless of consequence.A country of slavery and of Indian wars. There’s much truth in that vision. But if you know where to look, you can uncover a different history, one of vibrant resistance, one that’s been mostly forgotten.This Radical Land recovers that story. Daegan Miller is our guide on a beautifully written, revelatory trip across the continent during which we encounter radical thinkers, settlers, and artists who grounded their ideas of freedom, justice, and progress in the very landscapes around them, even as the runaway engine of capitalism sought to steamroll everything in its path.Here we meet Thoreau, the expert surveyor, drawin