Endorsements

winner of the 2011 TURKU BOOK AWARD for environmental history

‘The close and dense connections pinpointed between culture, environment, and economy make this work an enriching, even indispensable read ... Essential.’, R. Spickermann, University of Texas - CHOICE Academic Reviews; ‘The Industrial Revolution is one of the great themes for environmental history. Here Barca rises to the challenge, providing a clear case study of an industrial transformation of a riverine environment in its political, intellectual, social, and economic context.’ J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University - Environmental History; ‘[Barca’s] penetrating, multi-layered unpacking of this tragic story makes significant contributions to environmental, social and intellectual history. Enclosing Water is essential reading for understanding the dialectical consequences of changing socio-ecological relationships. It offers an original, thought-provoking way of seeing how society creates landscapes out of visionary ideal of itself.’ Harold Platt, Loyola University, Chicago - Environment and History; ‘Barca has a very rich and exciting set of concepts that she has developed to interpret the unfolding of the events in the Liri Valley: Enclosing Water; disorder of water; ecology of waterpower; liberating nature; industrial riverscape; the machine in the river; the tragedy of enclosure; seeing like an engineer; the unimproving state; industry and disaster. These concepts are unique to Barca’s highly creative interpretation of environmental history and are what are going to put her stamp on the field’ - Carolyn Merchant, University of California at Berkeley.