Historians know that time and space set the dimensions of our subject, but most of us are more concerned with the former than the latter. Space provides the stage on which time's story unfolds; it is not part of the story itself. Among the many contributions of the new environmental historians is to emphasize the deep connections between time and space. The landscape, they remind us, is both the setting and the subject of human action. “Nature” does not stand outside history; because it is always the product of our imagination and intervention, the natural world has a history of its own. David Blackbourn's study of “water, landscape, and the making of modern Germany” shows us how interesting and important that history can be.

Historians of Germany have been slow to join the growing trend of environmental history. In part this is because it does not seem to illuminate the politically driven issues that surround “the German question.” But equally important, the racially charged celebrations of nature popular between the wars has made this whole set of issues politically suspect. As Blackbourn points out, to German-speakers, a book with a title that would translate Rooted in the Land, which seems harmless when published by two American environmentalists, would evoke memories of Nazi celebrations of blood and soil. Not surprisingly, therefore, much of the historiographical inspiration for Blackbourn's book comes from American environmentalists such as Richard White, William Cronon, and Donald Worster. One hopes that other historians of central Europe will in turn be inspired by Blackbourn's use of the work of these and other scholars.

The Conquest of Nature is composed of six thematically linked and chronologically arranged chapters: on the vast eighteenth-century land reclamation project in the marsh areas along the Oder river, on the remaking of the Rhine in the early nineteenth century, on the creation of a seaport at Jade Bay around mid-century, on the great dam-building projects that provided water and electricity for German economic expansion after 1880, on the sinister interaction of racial domination and reclamation under the Nazis, and on the sharply contrasting policies toward the environment in the two Germanies after 1949.

Each of these chapters examines the interplay of ecological problems, technological innovation, and social institutions. In each—from the enlightened absolutism of the eighteenth century to the democratic politics of the late twentieth—political power plays a prominent role. The domination of nature is, as Blackbourn insists, inseparable from the domination of people. The costs and benefits of these projects are always difficult to calculate. Even in the most progressive among them, some groups lose their homes, livelihoods, and occasionally their lives. And when the conquest of nature is linked to political repression, as in the Nazi reclamation of the east, the human costs can be enormous. Blackbourn's account of the catastrophic environmental policies of the German Democratic Republic is especially striking. Those who mourn the vanished promise of the old GDR should not forget about Bitterfeld, where the acidity of the groundwater had a pH level “somewhere between battery acid and vinegar,” or the Buna plant at Halle that dumped large quantities of mercury into the River Saale. In these toxic sites, ordinary people paid dearly for their government's reckless exploitation of the landscape.

The Conquest of Nature has all the virtues we have come to expect in David Blackbourn's work: clear and graceful prose, enlivened by striking phrases, occasional flashes of quiet wit, and a keen sense for the telling example; deep research and a confident command of the secondary literature; a grasp of both national particularity and comparative developments; the ability to make complex issues accessible and, equally important, historically meaningful. As always, Blackbourn's scholarly and political judgments are balanced by his deep awareness of complexity and nuance. This book is, in a sense, a new departure for a scholar whose previous work has been about politics and religion. He has clearly had to master a great deal of difficult and, one suspects, not always intrinsically fascinating material. But Conquest of Nature is also a further exploration of the problem that has occupied Blackbourn throughout his scholarly career, from his early work on Württemberg to his extraordinary study of the Marian apparitions in Marpingen: the paradoxes and ambiguities in Germany's long and difficult road to modernity.