Foundations and American Environmentalism after World War Two

Jan 01, 2014 | by
  • Description

The goal of my research at the Rockefeller Archive Center in May 2014 was to answer a simple question: How does environmentalism work? Over the past thirty years, American historians have developed a relatively robust literature that examines the origins and growth of American environmentalism over the course of the twentieth century. The strengths of this literature are numerous, but one weakness is it does do not really show how actual environmental organizations were established, developed and changed over time; their role in shaping the agenda and terms of American environmental reform; and their connections with other aspects of American civil society and political institutions.