Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement
Phoebe S.K. Young
Oct 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley
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16 hr 2 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Camping appears to be a simple proposition, a time-honored way of getting away from it all. This book reveals that, for all its appeal, the simplicity of camping is deceptive, its history and meanings far from obvious. Why do some Americans find pleasure in sleeping outside, particularly when so many others, past and present, have had to do so for reasons other than recreation? Never only a vacation choice, camping has been something people do out of dire necessity and as a tactic of political protest. Yet the dominant interpretation of camping as a modern recreational ideal has obscured the connections to these other roles. Camping Grounds rediscovers unexpected and interwoven histories of sleeping outside. It uses extensive research to trace surprising links between veterans, tramps, John Muir, African American freedpeople, Indian communities, and early leisure campers in the nineteenth century; tin-can tourists, federal campground designers, Depression-era transients, family campers, backpacking enthusiasts, and political activists in the twentieth century; and the crisis of the unsheltered and the tent-based Occupy Movement in the twenty-first. These entwined stories show how Americans camp to claim a place in the American republic and why the outdoors is critical to how we relate to nature, the nation, and each other.
About the author
Phoebe S. K. Young is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place.
AudioFile Earphones Award winner Elizabeth Wiley is a seasoned actor, dialect coach, theater professor, and dedicated narrator. She brings over twenty-five years of award-winning acting and voice experience to the studio to create memorable, compelling storytelling.
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