In The Place with No Edge, Adam Mandelman follows three centuries of human efforts to inhabit and control the lower Mississippi River delta, the vast watery flatlands spreading across much of southern Louisiana. He finds that people’s use of technology to tame unruly nature in the region has produced interdependence with—rather than independence from—the environment. Created over millennia by deposits of silt and sand, the Mississippi River delta is one of the most dynamic landscapes in North America. From the eighteenth-century establishment of the first French fort below New Orleans to the creation of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan in the 2000s, people have attempted to harness and master the landscape through technology. Mandelman examines six specific interventions employed in the delta over time: levees, rice flumes, pullboats, geophysical surveys, dredgers, and petroleum cracking. He demonstrates that even as people seemed to gain control over the environment, they grew more deeply intertwined with—and vulnerable to—it. The greatest folly, Mandelman argues, is to believe that technology affords mastery. Environmental catastrophes of coastal land loss and petrochemical pollution may appear to be disconnected, but both emerged from the same fantasy of harnessing nature to technology. Similarly, the levee system’s failures and the subsequent deluge after Hurricane Katrina owe as much to centuries of human entanglement with the delta as to global warming’s rising seas and strengthening storms. The Place with No Edge advocates for a deeper understanding of humans’ relationship with nature. It provides compelling evidence that altering the environment—whether to make it habitable, profitable, or navigable —inevitably brings a response, sometimes with unanticipated consequences. Mandelman encourages a mindfulness of the ways that our inventions engage with nature and a willingness to intervene in responsible, respectful ways.
...MoreReview Drew Swanson (July 2021) Review of "The Place with No Edge: An Intimate History of People, Technology, and the Mississippi River Delta". Technology and Culture (pp. 943-944).
Article
Daniel Macfarlane;
(January 2020)
Nature Empowered: Hydraulic Models and the Engineering of Niagara Falls
(/isis/citation/CBB743954854/)
Article
Huizen, Philip Van;
(2010)
Building a Green Dam: Environmental Modernism and the Canadian-American Libby Dam Project
(/isis/citation/CBB001030635/)
Book
Wohl, Ellen;
(2010)
A World of Rivers: Environmental Change on Ten of the World's Greatest Rivers
(/isis/citation/CBB001201858/)
Article
Chihyung Jeon;
Yeonsil Kang;
(October 2019)
Restoring and Re-Restoring the Cheonggyecheon: Nature, Technology, and History in Seoul, South Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB905789434/)
Book
Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted;
(2014)
Rivers, Memory, and Nation-Building: A History of the Volga and Mississippi Rivers
(/isis/citation/CBB114658545/)
Article
Shinichiro Nakamura;
Taikan Oki;
Shinjiro Kanae;
(April 2022)
Lost Rivers: Tokyo's Sewage Problem in the High-Growth Period, 1953–73
(/isis/citation/CBB066505806/)
Book
Richard M., Jr. Mizelle;
(2014)
Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination
(/isis/citation/CBB971840782/)
Article
Luminita Gatejel;
(October 2018)
Building a Better Passage to the Sea: Engineering and River Management at the Mouth of the Danube, 1829–61
(/isis/citation/CBB779229466/)
Chapter
Veronica Ghizzi;
(2010)
Si durabit tregua intra aquam et nos: fiumi e castelli mantovani nel trecento
(/isis/citation/CBB180053135/)
Chapter
Pietro C. Marani;
(2010)
Leonardo e le acque in Lombardia. Dal "Primo Libro delle Acque" ai "Diluvi"
(/isis/citation/CBB801952762/)
Book
E. Cram;
(2022)
Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West
(/isis/citation/CBB136289783/)
Article
Fabregat Galcerà, Emetri;
Vidal Franquet, Jacobo;
(2007)
La canalització de l'Ebre a la regió de Tortosa (1347--1851)
(/isis/citation/CBB000831572/)
Article
Maffioli, Cesare S;
(2008)
Galileo, Guiducci and the Engineer Bartolotti on the Bisenzio River
(/isis/citation/CBB000931293/)
Book
Margaret A. Bickers;
(2014)
Red Water, Black Gold: The Canadian River in Western Texas, 1920–1999
(/isis/citation/CBB169198155/)
Book
Paul J. Lindholdt;
(2018)
The Spokane River
(/isis/citation/CBB697263143/)
Book
Patrick Dearen;
(2016)
Bitter waters: The struggles of the Pecos River
(/isis/citation/CBB122189904/)
Book
Stagg, Ronald John;
(2010)
The Golden Dream: A History of the St. Lawrence Seaway
(/isis/citation/CBB001421492/)
Article
Holzer, Stefan M.;
(2010)
The Polonceau Roof and Its Analysis
(/isis/citation/CBB001231632/)
Article
Smith, Denis;
(2007)
Sir Douglas Strutt Galton (1822--1899) and the Administration of Victorian Engineering
(/isis/citation/CBB000700489/)
Book
Kenna Lang Archer;
(2015)
Unruly waters: A social and environmental history of the Brazos River
(/isis/citation/CBB809370798/)
Be the first to comment!