---------------· ... ••• . .. ••• .._, •• ... ••• ---------------· Following the Current is an illuminating look at a little corner of Earth that also tells bigger stories about human history. It's an admirable model of collaborative bioregional history. -Leif Fredricksont Director of the Public History Program at the University of Montana and cocreator of the award-winning Death in the West podcast. Ambitious and personal, Jackie G. VanZahms' history of Illinois' and Wisconsin's Fox River reveals the ever-changing ebb and flow of the relationship between humans and nature across time. Following the Current is bioregionalism at its most essential...and a river runs through it. -Sara Dantt author of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West Of all Earth's landforms, rivers might well be the most fundamental to civilization, but are the most neglected and abused ecosystems. Yet, we are invariably drawn to such waterways, as the rivers and streams that pass through our cities, suburbs, and neighborhoods are often our first encounters with the wild-the more than human world. These are also hybrid ecosystems-blending the human and natural systems. In assembling this fine volume of essays on the Fox River, Dr. Jackie G. VanZahms unpacks the complexity of this hybridization on their home water. Although Dr. Shawn Bailey calls this a "microhistory" in the Introduction, it is also the history of American's evolving relationship to the natural world. -Greg Gordont editor of Rewilding the Urban Frontier: River Conservation in the Anthropocene Except for the dubious distinction of once being listed as one of the most polluted rivers in the country, the Fox River of Illinois shares both a deep-time and modern history with scores of other rivers in the U.S. That makes the story laid out here a lesson with wide relevance. Coursing southward 200 miles from its Wisconsin sources past Chicago to empty into the Illinois River, and eventually the Mississippi, the Fox was once a river of Mound Builder natives, then European fur hunters, then Midwestern settlers, dam builders, and now urban recreationists and environmentalists. Each successive population has transformed the Fox into a different river and an entirely new place for humans and wild creatures alike. And sometimes-as with modern efforts to remove its more than a dozen dams-that has meant turning the previous place on its head. An exemplary river narrative, Following the Current is a truly fine anthology of the kind of microhistory we need to tell about much of America. -Dan Florest New York Times bestselling author of Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America
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