Writing Nature in Cold War American Literature redraws ecocritical thinking. The atomic age, it argues, changed ways of seeing "Nature". Throughout, Daw weaves delicate, though challenging, analyses of how "ecological thought" is at play across a number of Cold War American writers not usually discussed by ecocritics.'
Nick Selby, University of East Anglia

First book-length ecocritical study of Cold War American literature

Compelling analyses of the function and representation of Nature in a wide range of Cold War fiction and poetry by authors including Paul Bowles, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Mary McCarthy reveal the prevalence of portrayals of Nature as an infinite, interdependent system in American literature written between 1945 and 1971.

Sarah Daw astutely highlights the Cold War's often overlooked role in environmental history, arguing that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) can be considered as part of a trend of increasingly ecological depictions of Nature in literature written after 1945. By exploring the most recent developments in the field of ecocriticism, the book is embedded within current ecocritical debates concerning the Anthropocene and anthropogenic climate change.

Sarah Daw is Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Bristol.


Cover image: view of Earth taken from the Apollo 8 spacecraft © akg/Stocktrek Images

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ISBN 978-1-4744-3002-9 [PPC]
ISBN 978-1-4744-3003-6 [cover]
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