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Paul Sutter finds in these thousand acres of backwoods Georgia a powerful and complicated story of humans on the land. He is a wonderful storyteller, but more, he digs deeply into the past to explain how and why this place became both a ""park"" and a ""horrible example"" of soil erosion. This is one of the finest local environmental histories we have, and it offers important insights for all of us today.--Donald Worster ""author of A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir"" Public historians will be particularly pleased to read Sutter's arguments for interpreting this story to visitors at Providence Canyon Park. . . . His vision for bringing the complexities of environmental history to our public parks and forests is certainly a welcome one, and an approach full of exciting possibilities.--Al Hester ""H-Net Reviews"" So what is there in a book about west Georgia gullies for academic readers? Quite a bit, actually, for these are very instructive gullies that illustrate the use and abuse of soil worldwide. Writing skillfully, with a wry eye for environmental irony, historian Sutter traces a history of Providence Canyon, where erosion of ill-kept farmland resulted in some of the most spectacular gullies in the world during the 19th century.--B. E. Johansen ""Choice"" This is a great history of forest use, agricultural practice, market dictates, federal policy, and the soils on which they all act. Sutter put in considerable research trying to find any and all mentions of the gullies, unearthing some that might easily have been missed. Not many people, even among environmental historians, go this deeply into the soils and subsurface geology for answers. This book makes clear a host of reasons why we should.--James H. Tuten ""Environmental History"" Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies is not light reading, but the book is essential to those interested in the history of geologic surveys and soil conservation from a national perspective, and it is vital to the understanding of a lost economy based on farming, and of how an economically depressed area might rise from the gullies to reinvent itself.--A. W. Blalock ""Northeast Georgia Living"" Every landscape has two histories, a physical one and a cultural one. In Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South, Paul Sutter masterfully integrates these two histories to shed new light on our most underappreciated natural resource and its influence on the history of American conservation. . . . What makes a great environmental history text is the use of multiple lines of evidence and the inclusion of different perspectives. Like historical soil erosion in the American South, Sutter's insight is both broad and deep.--Jason P. Julian ""Journal of Historical Geography""

Paul Sutter finds in these thousand acres of backwoods Georgia a powerful and complicated story of humans on the land. He is a wonderful storyteller, but more, he digs deeply into the past to explain how and why this place became both a 'park' and a 'horrible example' of soil erosion. This is one of the finest local environmental histories we have, and it offers important insights for all of us today. --Donald Worster, author of A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir In this sweeping and powerful environmental study, Paul Sutter uses Georgia's Providence Canyon both as a cautionary tale of erosion and the opportunity to explore soil science, geology, southern farming practices, misguided experts, and boosters' fantasies of marketing the mammoth gulley as a lesser Grand Canyon. --Pete Daniel, author of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies is not light reading, but the book is essential to those interested in the history of geologic surveys and soil conservation from a national perspective, and it is vital to the understanding of a lost economy based on farming, and of how an economically depressed area might rise from the gullies to reinvent itself.--A.W. Blalock Northeast Georgia Living Paul Sutter finds in these thousand acres of backwoods Georgia a powerful and complicated story of humans on the land. He is a wonderful storyteller, but more, he digs deeply into the past to explain how and why this place became both a park and a horrible example of soil erosion. This is one of the finest local environmental histories we have, and it offers important insights for all of us today.--Donald Worster author of A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir So what is there in a book about west Georgia gullies for academic readers? Quite a bit, actually, for these are very instructive gullies that illustrate the use and abuse of soil worldwide. Writing skillfully, with a wry eye for environmental irony, historian Sutter traces a history of Providence Canyon, where erosion of ill-kept farmland resulted in some of the most spectacular gullies in the world during the 19th century.--B. E. Johansen Choice Public historians will be particularly pleased to read Sutter's arguments for interpreting this story to visitors at Providence Canyon Park. . . . His vision for bringing the complexities of environmental history to our public parks and forests is certainly a welcome one, and an approach full of exciting possibilities.--Al Hester H-Net Reviews This is a great history of forest use, agricultural practice, market dictates, federal policy, and the soils on which they all act. Sutter put in considerable research trying to find any and all mentions of the gullies, unearthing some that might easily have been missed. Not many people, even among environmental historians, go this deeply into the soils and subsurface geology for answers. This book makes clear a host of reasons why we should.--James H. Tuten Environmental History Every landscape has two histories, a physical one and a cultural one. In Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South, Paul Sutter masterfully integrates these two histories to shed new light on our most underappreciated natural resource and its influence on the history of American conservation. . . . What makes a great environmental history text is the use of multiple lines of evidence and the inclusion of different perspectives. Like historical soil erosion in the American South, Sutter's insight is both broad and deep.--Jason P. Julian Journal of Historical Geography Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies is not light reading, but the book is essential to those interested in the history of geologic surveys and soil conservation from a national perspective, and it is vital to the understanding of a lost economy based on farming, and of how an economically depressed area might rise from the gullies to reinvent itself.--A. W. Blalock Northeast Georgia Living

Paul Sutter finds in these thousand acres of backwoods Georgia a powerful and complicated story of humans on the land. He is a wonderful storyteller, but more, he digs deeply into the past to explain how and why this place became both a park and a horrible example of soil erosion. This is one of the finest local environmental histories we have, and it offers important insights for all of us today.--Donald Worster author of A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir Public historians will be particularly pleased to read Sutter's arguments for interpreting this story to visitors at Providence Canyon Park. . . . His vision for bringing the complexities of environmental history to our public parks and forests is certainly a welcome one, and an approach full of exciting possibilities.--Al Hester H-Net Reviews So what is there in a book about west Georgia gullies for academic readers? Quite a bit, actually, for these are very instructive gullies that illustrate the use and abuse of soil worldwide. Writing skillfully, with a wry eye for environmental irony, historian Sutter traces a history of Providence Canyon, where erosion of ill-kept farmland resulted in some of the most spectacular gullies in the world during the 19th century.--B. E. Johansen Choice This is a great history of forest use, agricultural practice, market dictates, federal policy, and the soils on which they all act. Sutter put in considerable research trying to find any and all mentions of the gullies, unearthing some that might easily have been missed. Not many people, even among environmental historians, go this deeply into the soils and subsurface geology for answers. This book makes clear a host of reasons why we should.--James H. Tuten Environmental History Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies is not light reading, but the book is essential to those interested in the history of geologic surveys and soil conservation from a national perspective, and it is vital to the understanding of a lost economy based on farming, and of how an economically depressed area might rise from the gullies to reinvent itself.--A. W. Blalock Northeast Georgia Living Every landscape has two histories, a physical one and a cultural one. In Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South, Paul Sutter masterfully integrates these two histories to shed new light on our most underappreciated natural resource and its influence on the history of American conservation. . . . What makes a great environmental history text is the use of multiple lines of evidence and the inclusion of different perspectives. Like historical soil erosion in the American South, Sutter's insight is both broad and deep.--Jason P. Julian Journal of Historical Geography

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Paul S. Sutter is an associate professor of history at University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement.

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