Current Installment

The American West has been a fertile seedbed for opposition to environmental reform. James Morton Turner argues that populist opposition to environmental reform from the 1970s into the 1990s did not emerge most forcefully in battles over pollution, toxins, and other threats to public health, but in response to liberal Democrats and environmentalists’ championing of a new federal role in addressing long-standing issues such as wilderness protection. Through its national agenda, beginning in the 1970s the Republican party successfully harnessed growing anger over public lands protection. Republicans thereby made public lands, especially those in the West, an issue essential to the rise of the conservative Right in the postwar era.

“Teaching the JAH” uses online tools to bridge the gap between the latest scholarly research in U.S. history and the practice of classroom teaching. JAH authors demonstrate how featured articles might be taught in a U.S. history survey course.

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