Setting the saga of human relations with the environment in the broad context of scientific, social, and cultural history, this book demonstrates how profoundly notions of nationality and debates over race and immigration have shaped American understandings of the natural world.

Acknowledgments 1. Strangers and Natives Knowing Nature through Nationality The Naming of Strangers The Alien Menace: Humanizing Nature and Naturalizing Humans Our Fellow Immigrants Strangers on the Land 2. The Avian Conquest of a Continent Transatlantic Flights Flying Feathers The Stranger Finch There Goes the Neighborhood: Dispossessing the Rightful Tenants of Land and Sky Standing up for Poor Jack The Cockney Cousin The Successful and Exemplary Sparrow 3. Plants, Insects, and Other Strangers to the Soil Floral Menace and Floral Promise Strange Fruits: The Enrichment of Nature Determining Desirability Shutting the Door on Plant Plunderers The Menace of Plant Quarantines A Horticultural Ellis Island The Rediscovery of Native Value 4. Arboreal Immigrants Natural Beauty and Foreign Beauty The Glamor of a Foreign Name The Tree That Grew in Brooklyn (and Nearly Everywhere Else) The Strange Career of the Universal Australian The Tarnished Tree: California's Raging Eucalyptus Controversy Eucalyptus Eulogy: The Natural Value of Heritage Getting Back to (Lost) Nature: Restoring Original California Landscapes of Purity and Intolerance 5. The Nature of Alien Nation The Nature of Fear and the Greening of Hate Wilted Metaphors and Calling Strangers Names Flora and Fauna That Are Here to Stay The Globalization of Nature and the Universal Sparrow The Historian's Contribution Notes / 191 Index / 249

"Anyone who thinks worry about invasive species is a new phenomenon should think again! Coates depicts a 19th century America awash in fear of starlings, English sparrows, Hessian flies, gypsy moths, and tree-of-heaven. This is a scholarly yet lively review of the factors that have shaped attitudes towards introduced species, replete with innumerable vignettes of surprising critics and defenders of various new arrivals. Any aficionado of invasions will be enthralled."—Dan Simberloff, author of Strangers in Paradise: Impact and Management of Nonindigenous Species in Florida"This is a fascinating work of scholarship, one I could hardly put down. It is a must read for anyone interested in the social and moral context of managing non-native species."—Dov Sax, co-editor of Species Invasions: Insights into Ecology, Evolution, and Biogeography

"A remarkably nuanced and richly researched overview of U.S. attitudes toward alien species, providing an eminently readable account about how Americans have come to view this foreign element in their forests, fields, waterways, and flyways." Oregon Historical Qtly