Adeline Barry Davee Professor of History & Law
Case Western Reserve University
Ted Steinberg will speak on his new book, Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of
Greater New York (Simon & Schuster 2014). His talk will focus on the history of floodplain development in New York City, past efforts to combat coastal flooding, and recent post-Hurricane Sandy plans to save the city. Gotham Unbound tells the four-century history of how hundreds of square miles of open marshlands became home to six percent of the U.S. population. Steinberg vividly brings a vanished New York back to life, detailing how New Yorkers transformed salt marsh and shellfish beds into a land jam-packed with people, asphalt and steel, and the reeds and gulls that thrive among them.
Ted Steinberg is an award-winning environmental historian, and the author of five previous books, including American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (2008) and
Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (2002).
Steinberg’s lecture is co-sponsored by Yale Environmental History; Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies; Yale Climate and Energy Initiative; and Yale’s Joint Degree Program in
Architecture and Environmental Studies.