Books in the Nature and Culture in America series

Free and Natural is a cultural history of nudity offering an in-depth account of how the naked body came to be closely tied to modern ideas about nature and authenticity. Sarah Schrank explores how the "free and natural" lifestyle emerged from the history of the nudist movement, sexual and environmental politics, and consumer capitalism.

Bridging the fields of environmental history and American studies, Rendering Nature examines surprising interconnections between nature and culture in distinct places, times, and contexts over the course of U.S. history.

Empire of Vines traces the development of wine culture as grape growing expanded from New York to the Midwest before gaining ascendancy in California-a progression that illustrates viticulture's centrality to the nineteenth-century American projects of national expansion and the formation of a national culture.

Prior to the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, travelers returned from Alaska's Inside Passage with fascinating accounts of its wonders. Historian Robert Campbell demonstrates how these tourists served as shock troops of the gold rush by portraying Alaska as a "Last West" ripe for American conquest.