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Environmental Historian: An Interview with Alfred W. Crosby

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2015

John F. Schwaller
John F. Schwaller*
Affiliation:
University at Albany Albany, New York
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Extract

Alfred W. Crosby is the author of such influential works as The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1973). He lives in retirement on Nantucket Island with his wife Frances Karttunen, noted in her own right for important works in linguistics and history. In September, 2013, I had the opportunity to carry on a long conversation with Crosby about his work, American Studies, and the future for environmental history. Crosby suffers from Parkinson's disease. His mind is sharp and his insights are keen. The Columbian exchange is the phenomenon of the contact period in which European crops and animals were imported into the New World, while New World crops and animals were introduced into Europe.

Type
Interview
Information
The Americas , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 309 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2015 

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References

1. Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

2. Christian, David, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

3. Crosby, Alfred W., The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600 (Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology through History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).

4. This lecture, originally with the playful title “Big History as Prophylactic to Premature Interpretation. Example: Exchange the Columbian Exchange for the Anthropocene Exchange,” has been translated into Spanish with the sedate title “Gran historia como historia ambiental” in Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad [Colegio de Michoacán] 34:136 (2013), pp. 22– 39.