Nature's Metropolis: Chicago And The Great West

• Nature's Metropolis: Chicago And The Great West
  William Cronon - W.W. Norton, 1991 - 530 pp. - £27.50

Specialisation, that much-lamented curse of the age: nobody likes it but everybody does it. The best people specialise and sub-specialise. We all know the orthopaedic surgeon who does knees, the mergers-and- acquisitions attorney who does takeovers, the academic who does, well, pick a smallish subject, and you will find a specialist or two in it, busy elaborating definitions, establishing boundaries, justifying the grant. The historian who is author of this remarkable volume sees history differently, and a bracing refresher it is that he gives us.