Laid Waste!: The Culture of Exploitation in Early America
Laid Waste!: The Culture of Exploitation in Early America
Larson, John Lauritz
product information
Condition: New, UPC: 9780812251845, Publication Date: Sun, December 1, 2019, Type: Hardcover ,
join & start selling
description
6

After humble beginnings as faltering British colonies, the United States acquired astonishing wealth and power as the result of what we now refer to as modernization. Originating in England and Western Europe, transplanted to the Americas, then copied around the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this process locked together science and technology, political democracy, economic freedom, and competitive capitalism. This has produced for some populations unimagined wealth and material comfort, yet it has also now brought the global environment to a tipping point beyond which life as we know it may not be sustainable. How did we come to endanger the very future of life on earth in our heedless pursuit of wealth and happiness?

In Laid Waste , John Lauritz Larson answers that question with a 350-year review of the roots of an American "culture of exploitation" that has left us free, rich, and without an honest sense of how this crisis came to be. Larson undertakes an ambitious historical synthesis, seeking to illuminate how the culture of exploitation grew out of the earliest English settlements and has continually undergirded U.S. society and its cherished myths. Through a series of meditations on key concepts, the story moves from the starving times of early Jamestown through the rise of colonial prosperity, the liberation of the revolutionary generation, the launching of the American republic, and the emergence of a new global industrial power by the end of the nineteenth century. Through this story, the book explores the rise of an American sense of righteousness, entitlement, and destiny that has masked any recognition that our wealth and success has come at expense to anyone or anything. Part polemic, part jeremiad, and part historical overview, Laid Waste is a provocative and bracing account of how the development of American culture itself has led us to today's crises.

reviews

Be the first to write a review

member goods

No member items were found under this heading.

notems store

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ...

by Carlson, Richard

Paperback /Paperback

$14.24

I Spy with My Little ...

by Wargin, Kathy-Jo

Hardcover /Hardcover

$13.59

Refugee and Immigrant Rights

by Gagne, Tammy

Hardcover /Hardcover

listens & views

MOODSWINGS

by BLACKWOOD,STEVE

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$15.49

BACH CIRCLE III

by BACH / VOGEL

COMPACT DISC

$17.75

PSYCHIC PSUMMER (DIG)

by CAVE

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$11.99

KAR DEE AKK AKE

by VON HAZE

VINYL LP

out of stock

$17.75

Return Policy

All sales are final

Shipping

No special shipping considerations available.
Shipping fees determined at checkout.