Taking the Field

Winner of the 2024 Robert M. Utley Prize Winner of the 2024 Hal K. Rothman Prize Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. In the late nineteenth century, at a time when Americans were becoming more removed from nature than ever before, U.S. soldiers were uniquely positioned to understand and construct nature’s ongoing significance for their work and for the nation as a whole. American ideas and debates about nature evolved