"Lake Superior, the largest lake in the world, holds 12 percent of the world’s fresh water. Humans almost caused irreversible damage to the lake through deforestation and pollution, but thanks to efforts of the last 50 years, there has been a significant positive change. Langston, a professor of environmental history at Michigan Technological University, offers a fascinating look at the history of this body of water from the 1800s through current times. She clearly explains how mining and logging industries damaged this lake and explores toxaphene, PCBs and dioxin pollutants, which can affect the creatures living in or near the water. An entire chapter is devoted to climate change and the current issues that plague the Great Lakes. This meticulously researched book is written for the layperson to understand and Langston’s passion for the Great Lakes, Superior in particular, is sure to rub off on the reader." Green Bay Press Gazette 7/13/18
"Lessons from recent history about how to clean up and protect the Greatest Lake: Most of us who live near Lake Superior develop an appreciation of this natural wonder, and we know that there is always something new to learn about it. Nancy Langston, a resident of the rugged Keweenaw Peninsula and a professor of environmental history at Michigan Technological University, offers lessons from history about what we need to do to protect the lake today. After a glimpse of the geologic forces that created the big lake, she recounts 300 years of human history, focusing on the disturbances inflicted on the lake and its aboriginal inhabitants by industrious Europeans. She details extractions, environmental battles, and scientific learning that show how close we have come to ruining the lake. Her thesis is that the lake has healed itself from some of our depredations, and with some help from us, there is hope for further healing, even from the damages we continue to wreak today....Sustaining Lake Superior is thoroughly researched and well documented, passionately written and easy to read." Agate Magazine, March 2018
"Although the French naming of lac Supérieur referred to its “upper” location in the Great Lakes chain, it is an appropriate appellation given the enormous size of this inland sea. Lake Superior can swallow all the other Great Lakes whole and then go back for additional helpings of Erie. Yet neither Lake Superior, nor the other constituent parts of the world’s largest freshwater system, has received much attention from North American environmental historians. Nancy Langston’s excellent Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World will go a long way toward rectifying this blind spot....In this study of “gichi-gami”—the Ojibwe name for Lake Superior— one of the many strengths is the foregrounding of Native issues. The author effortlessly crosses multiple borders, treating Canada as an equal actor rather than a blank space on the other side of an artificial line. The author’s passion for this place jumps off the pages....The book foregrounds the agency of ecologies and nonhuman forces in coproducing human history, demonstrating why materialist approaches to environmental history are among the most exciting future avenues for environmental history. Langston expertly synthesizes historical and scientific evidence, building on her own path-breaking work on toxins and endocrine disruptors." Daniel Macfarlane, review in Environmental History, July 2018
"Deep, cold and remote, Lake Superior is often called ‘pristine’ or ‘unspoiled’, as if it were somehow immune from the environmental problems of industrial North America. But as Nancy Langston demonstrates in this fine new study, Lake Superior is, in many ways, at the epicentre of a vexing new reality of climate change and pervasive toxic contaminants." Review in Environment and History 2018
"Langston is an excellent storyteller. Her fine writing weaves together heroes, villains and the twists and turns of plots and subplots, as well as a personal narrative of living on the lake, into a compelling account that water resources scientists and social scientists seldom deliver. The historical method reveals relationships among living and non-living things and the multiple feedback loops through which each affects the other. She is particularly attentive to environmental ethics and the plight of native peoples. In covering nearly two centuries, she demonstrates how the past refused to stay the past, and decisions made decades ago, many ill advised and poorly informed, resurface as nagging problems." Review in Water Alternatives 2018
"Historian and activist Langston (environmental history, Michigan Technological Univ.; Toxic Bodies) seeks to capture the dynamism and significance of the largest lake in the world, from its fascinating social history to its unique relationship to global issues of pollution, recovery, industrialization, and climate change. Beginning with Lake Superior's ecological history, the book quickly moves into the massive and unfortunate impacts of the pulp, paper, and mining industries of the surrounding region from the late 19th century to the present. Various efforts to regulate water quality and reduce harmful pollutants over the years are also chronicled; many too little or too late, as Langston makes clear through a convincing combination of historical evidence and personal commentary. Readers are left encouraged to take action for the sake of Lake Superior as much as the wonders of their own backyards. VERDICT An engrossing cautionary tale for lovers of nature and the Great Lakes in particular. Recommended for students and enthusiasts of environmental science and history.--Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle" Library Journal, Nov. 1, 2017
“This insightful environmental history is a cautionary story about the true cost of the unenlightened commodification of Lake Superior. Like the Anishinaabe whose stewardship Nancy Langston chronicles, she invokes Seventh Generation thinking: make wise decisions today based on the best interests of future generations.”—Patty Loew, Bad River Anishinaabe
“A stirring biography of a most important place. Writing with insight and passion at the confluence of geography, ecology, and history, Nancy Langston connects the human story to that of the world’s largest lake, an enigma to many of us and an endangered species that affects all of us. Her voice is clear and honest, though never judgmental; it conveys welcome answers and hope for the future.”—Jack E. Davis, author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea
"Nancy Langston has presented us with a masterful and vividly written study of the impact of industrial pollution, invasive species, and habitat loss on the world's largest freshwater lake. But it is her inquiry into the effects of climate change on Lake Superior that make this book the Silent Spring of freshwater ecology.”—Jerry Dennis, author of The Living Great Lakes and The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes
"Nancy Langston’s Sustaining Lake Superior is a wonderful book and an excellent addition to her existing body of work. Combining detailed historical and scientific evidence with penetrating insights into broader global issues, the book has much to offer not only to those interested in the environmental history of Lake Superior but also to anyone concerned with the fate of the planet.”—Tim LeCain, author of Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet
“A Great Lake deserves a great book, and Nancy Langston has written it. Carefully researched, scientifically literate, appropriately transnational, handsomely illustrated, and engagingly written, this book is a shining example of environmental history at its best.”—J.R. McNeill, co-author of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945
“Langston has written nothing less than the definitive biography of the Greatest Lake, from its birth right up to its current encounter with climate change. It is a wonderful, moving story, and as she eloquently describes, a new and challenging chapter must now be written.”—James Gustave Speth, former Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy
“With passion and grace, Nancy Langston explores why environmental policies have achieved such mixed results. Lake Superior reveals how environmental ideas sufficient for one era too often fail in another.”—Richard White, Stanford University and author of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America and The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River
“In Sustaining Lake Superior, Nancy Langston takes stock of the big lake and the surrounding region. She dives into to the geology, biology, and human dimensions and shows how they are all intertwined. This fascinating book makes it clear why Lake Superior deserves our respect and protection: we are part of the lake, and the lake is part of us.”—William Rapai, author of Lake Invaders: Invasive Species and the Battle For the Future of the Great Lakes
“The deep originality of this work consists not just in its oddly specific subject, Lake Superior, but also in its general and iterative argument about there being several very different kinds and scales of causality at work, both in environmental degradation and in restoration.”—Colin Duncan, author of The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature
