Writing Nature in Cold War American Literature

Compelling analyses of the function and representation of Nature in a wide range of Cold War fiction and poetry by authors including Paul Bowles, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Mary McCarthy reveals the prevalence of portrayals of Nature as an infinite, interdependent system in American literature written between 1945 and 1971.

Daw astutely highlights the Cold War's often overlooked role in environmental history and argues that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) can be considered as part of a trend of increasingly ecological depictions of Nature in literature written after 1945. By exploring the most recent developments in the field of ecocriticism, the book is embedded within current ecocritical debates concerning the Anthropocene and anthropogenic climate change.

Sarah Daw is the Environmental Humanities Visiting Research Fellow & Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at University of Edinburgh.