Wet Prairie

Adam Mandelman:
A welcome addition to the growing global literature on wetland historical geography and environmental history. Carefully researched, well argued, and clearly written, Stunden Bower’s first book is a valuable read for scholars in these fields.

Sterling Evans, Department of History, University of Oklahoma:
Wet Prairie is excellent environmental history that evaluates the human/nature relationship.

Geoff Cunfer, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan:

The work represents environmental history at its best ... As Canadian history, it further illuminates the federal-provincial contest over natural resources in the west, arguing that the political jurisdictional battle had real consequences on Manitoba’s wet agricultural landscape, even as wetlands forced the various levels of government to adjust their relationships with one another. Drainage, to many, seems rather uninteresting; Stunden Bower shows how important it really is, even to people who live far from the Red River.

from the Foreword by Graeme Wynn:

This book offers a finely tuned narrative of back-and-forth interactions ... between human desires and environmental circumstances. More than this, however, Stunden Bower’s work offers a convincing demonstration that environmental history is ... a wide-ranging, integrative approach to the past capable of providing new perspectives on, and a more complete understanding of, topics and themes long of interest to historians.