Trembling Earth

The Okefenokee has been well documented through history, and Nelson does a fine job of pulling the research together to underscore her theory. She presents an excellent, detailed review of human influence in the Swamp from the Creeks and Seminoles to present-day federal government ownership. Nelson has done a wonderful, long-awaited service in telling a complete cultural history of the Okefenokee. It will be the leading reference for many years and is suitable for the lay audience, historians, and scientists. --Environmental History Of particular interest is Nelson's wonderful account of the swamp as a place people moved through: in warfare (ambushing and fleeing enemies, especially effectively on the part of Seminoles in conflict with American troops), but also in flight from slavery and colonial occupation. The history of a place whose longstanding use was for transit and refuge shifts the lens a little on what or where any 'place' is, and what is important to know about it, environmentally and culturally. --American Studies Nelson makes a valuable contribution to the growing volume of work that considers other important but previously neglected areas . . . Her eco-cultural history of the Okefenokee Swamp is a lucidly written, solidly researched study that contributes to many areas of scholarship . . . Nelson's is an innovative work on many levels and deserves the attention of scholars interested in the South, the environment, and cultural studies. --Georgia Historical Quarterly Megan Kate Nelson has tapped a voluminous wealth of source materials to produce a cultural study of Georgia's great Okefenokee Swamp. . . . Overall, this book is an intriguing read. Nelson's descriptions of the cypress milling operations are, in fact, are some of the best this reviewer has encountered. --Journal of Southern History In Megan Nelson's approach, we become more familiar with the swamp as we learn about the human history relative to it, from Native Americans to European settlers to escaped slaves. --Bloomsbury Review An insightful and lively history of the Okefenokee. --Tampa Tribune Trembling Earth is a fascinating, valuable addition to the (suddenly) burgeoning literature encompassing the American Southeast's environment. Nelson's work, excellent in itself, represents a flowering in the regional field, I think, that will soon rival the larger and older tradition of western environmental history. --Jack Temple Kirby "author of Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society " Trembling Earth assembles a wealth of fascinating, valuable, and previously uncollected (for the most part) information about a key locale in American social and cultural history. Not since Elizabeth McKinsey's Niagara Falls has there been so effective an analysis of a particular American landscape as this one. --David C. Miller "author of Dark Eden: The Swamp in Nineteenth-Century American Culture "

Megan Kate Nelson is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Fullerton.