"Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West" by Sara Dant

(Santa Fe New Mexican) ... “Native peoples generally lived lightly on the land but sometimes pressed it beyond its carrying capacity,” she writes. “When Europeans and later Americans arrived, then, they were engaging not with undisturbed nature, as so many argued until the 1990s, but these immigrants nevertheless portrayed the West as an ‘Eden’ or Promised Land destined for them. … For some, the West fulfilled this divine ‘land of milk and honey’ vision, but for many, the region constituted a harsh and unforgiving desert of aridity and struggle.” Continued