Border Flows

Reviews / Votes

This collection of thoughtful essays by an impressive group of expert contributors examines separation and inter-action along the aquatic borders, boundaries, and borderlands shared by Canada and the United States. How distinct jurisdictions as neighbours at various political levels have and will con-tinue to face common challenges makes this volume a valuable record of aquatic envi-ronmental history and a source of insights into the future of water, aptly described by the editors as aa fundamental environmental and moral concern of the twenty-first century.a -Jamie Benidickson, Faculty of Law and Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability, University of Ottawa These impressive essays penetrate many dualisms-abundance and scarcity, Canada and the U.S., local and regional, science and humanities, and geography and history to name a few. The accomplished authors provide both rich details and expansive views of the transborder territory and illuminate both the shared and dissimilar interests of the two principal political entities, while exposing the mutual concerns that float atop the border-defying and fluid topic of water. Riding the rapids of a tumultuous subject, the contributors make sense of the highly contentious and complex issues for academic and lay readers alike. -Craig E. Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor, Department of Geography & Anthropology, Louisiana State University Reading this book was like taking a boundary waters canoe trip with experienced guides narrating the landscape and humanityas place in it. They taught me about lakes, fish, and flora; law, politics, and prejudice; photographs, fish-buying, and ice-sail-ing. In the evening after dinner, around the campfire, these boundary waters guides spoke from their hearts about their love of nature and longing for a just world in the final section of the book entitled aFinding Our Place.a It was inspiring and enjoyable. I heartily recommend the journey. -Paul Hirt, Professor of History and Sustainability, Arizona State University "....This book presents close analyses of this paradox, as experienced in the waters and landscapes of the border regions of Canada and the United States. The editors, both at Western Michigan University, have brought together in this nicely constructed volume an international cast of historians and other scholars....". Bocking, S. (2018) Border Flows demonstrates the value of reaching across ideological and methodological boundaries that divide academic disciplines . . . the editors' keen sense for organization and the myriad conceptual connections that reach across each section, link this collection of articles to a larger aquatic context. This book will appeal to students and scholars from a wide variety of academic backgrounds and will serve as an excellent text for courses in legal history, environmental history, foreign relations, and borderlands studies. This edited collection represents a fine addition to the historiography of borders and water. - Erik Reardon, Canadian Journal of History