Perspective

Author Leo Marx's perspective is that of an historian and as a twentieth century observer and researcher. As an academic, he is certainly well grounded in American literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and uses this thorough knowledge to demonstrate how authors of both fiction and non-fiction works discussed the basic conflict between the pastoral ideal of the original settlers and the growing encroachment of mechanization that was the result of a rather natural historical progress. The work is filled with excerpts from all major American writers of the time, with serious and complex analysis in order to present the major themes of this work: man's relationship to nature and the conflicts posed by the assault of industrialization upon that relationship. To Marx, analysis of the contemporary literature provides the views of a variety of Americans themselves. Aside from those who damned the destruction of America's natural...