Samuel P. Hays is professor emeritus of history at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Explorations in
Environmental History, and, with Barbara D. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the
United States, 19551985. He and Barbara have amassed an extensive collection of documents, covering foreign
and domestic issues and including material from all fifty states and more than four hundred nationally circulated
environmental periodicals and state newsletters and magazines, now housed in the Environmental Archives of the
Archives of Industrial Society at the University of Pittsburgh.
Review
"This excellent history is unmatched in its insights on both past and present conservation thought."
--Virginia Quarterly Review
"An invaluable study."
--Washington Post
"This is a challenging reinterpretation of the conservation movement, based on impressive research."
--American Historical Review
University of Pittsburgh Press Web Site, May, 2001
Summary
The relevance and importance of Samuel P. Hay's book Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency has only increased
over time. Written almost half a century ago, it offers an invaluable history of the conservation movement's origins,
and provides an excellent context for contemporary enviromental problems and possible solutions.
The common assumption has been that the conservation movement was part of the popular uprising against control
by the business community-"the people" versus "the interests." Hays's study shows, rather,
that it came about as an attempt by scientists and technicians to apply their skills to the development and use
of natural resources. The resulting conflicts, far from being concerned with unequal distribution of wealth, were
struggles for policy control between conservation leaders and groups of resource users.
Against a background of rivers, forests, ranges, and public lands, this book defines two conflicting political
processes: the demand for an integrated, controlled development guided by an elite group of scientists and technicians
and the demand for a looser system allowing grassroots impulses to have a voice through elected government representatives.
