The Conquest Of Nature

David Blackbourn is Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1994. He is the author of The Fontana History of Germany 1780- 1918: The Long Nineteenth Century and Marpingen.The modern idea of 'mastery' over nature always had its critics, whether their motives were aesthetic, religious or environmentalist. By investigating how the most fundamental element - water - was 'conquered' by draining fens and marshes, straightening the courses of rivers, building high