Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott William Cronon

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 115, no. 2 tions between whaling nations reflected that Progressive-era faith in science’s ability to resolve disputes.The gap between what regulators wanted and what scientists knew,however, was literally immeasurable. Technological and theoretical limits and institutional parsimony led to pervasive ignorance about whale biology and ecology, which is why regulators could not, even when they wanted to, lower harvest quotas.Whale science also illuminates broader themes in fisheries history,from Johann Hjort’s connections to industry to a qualification of Carmel Finley’s thesis about Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) in All the Fish in the Sea (2011). Finley argues that MSY emerged as an American political foil in 1949, but the British had articulated this concept by 1942 .It is hard not to conclude that science was set up to fail and that its inability to deliver aided pretty much everyone but the whales. The history of whaling conservation thus speaks to the problem of protecting nature in a complex and mediated world.Whaling critics have pursued soft and hard policies. Beginning in the 1970s, they sought culture change, claiming whales were fellow species. They won converts,butsensitivitytoculturaldiversityand socialequityhas curbedthe righteousnotionof asinglerelationshiptowhales.Inthe1980s,they also enrolled non-whaling nations to outvote opponents on the IWC, but Japan countered with the same tactic in the early 2000s.Whaling is a classic example why open-access fisheries fail. Performed on the high seas beyond the sovereignty of any state, harvesting was never disciplined. The late-twentieth-century rise of quasi-privatized quota systems could have rectified some problems, but by then antiwhaling groups had committed to prohibition. In making whaling a moral issue, though, they embraced an uncompromisable view.As whale populations rebound, and as whaling cultures assertrights,anti-whalersmayseealliesendorse accommodationsthat,likeintheearlytwentieth century, enable whalers to work inside rather than outside a global regulatory framework. In other words, Whales & Nations reminds us why the seemingly abstract concept of sovereignty matters when thinking about conservation . Dorsey weaves a tale of modern whaling, the IWC, and environmentalism that shows how culture, consumption, and science have shaped management for a century.His achievement here, as with The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy (1998), illustrates the interplay of transnational and international impulses, and how both necessarily depend on who controls ecological space. Equally important, readers will enjoy it. Joseph E. Taylor, III Simon Fraser University Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon by Cindy Ott foreword by William Cronon University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2012. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 336 pages. $26.95 cloth. Long ago, as a graduate student in agriculture , I noticed the bibliographies of assigned readings often included a book published in 1949 by Salaman Redcliffe titled The History and Social Influence of the Potato. That book started an idiosyncrasy of noting books about foodstuffs.When I received the review copy of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon, there were two small tasks to begin my review. The first was to check the bibliography for Redcliffe’s book on the potato. It was there — a sign that the author was a foodstuff insider. The second task involved reading the first several sentences to see whether I would be drawn into a book about pumpkins — I was. Cindy Ott’s Pumpkin is thoroughly researched. It includes an extensive analysis of the literature and is fleshed out with interviews of farmers and community members.  OHQ vol. 115, no. 2 It draws from an expansive range of sources: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, magazine articles, cookbooks, school curricula, and more. The bibliography includes over 750 references and there are over 60 pages of notes. The book is both entertaining and scholarly. Pumpkin adds to a literature of food that perhapsstartedwiththeaforementionedpotato andnowincludesbananas(Bananas:AnAmericanHistorybyVirginiaScottJenkins ,Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), apples (The Apple: A History of Canada’s Perfect Fruit by Carol Martin, McArthur & Co., 2007), dates (Dates: A Global History by Nawal Nasrallah, Reaktion Books,2011),andmanyothers.Wemayseeaday when all foods have books about them. Ott reexamines American history through the lens of the pumpkin. It is an undertaking that is both intellectual and fun. She traces the pumpkin’s trajectory, by describing its presence in the food and spiritual culture...