Reconstructors: Land, Work, and Engineering After the Civil War - Softcover

Davis, John Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226850935 ISBN 13: 9780226850931

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2026

Synopsis

Explores the institutional and environmental transformations that occurred during the Reconstruction Era.

While the Reconstruction Era in America saw a paradigmatic realignment of the country’s core institutions and values, there was a physical quality to Reconstruction as well: the country was not only rebuilding the South after the Civil War, but flat-out building as it expanded westward.

In Reconstructors, John Dean Davis details how the Army Corps of Engineers and its subcontractors designed and redesigned the infrastructural landscape to support the republic’s rebirth. The Corps’ projects not only transformed the landscape; they created markets, fostered a distinctive expansionist culture, and—for a time—enacted a less discriminatory economic and social agenda across the South and West. Davis aims to bring federal power, environmentalism, and capitalism into a frame that reveals the landscape's power to further ideology.

About this title

About the Author

John Dean Davis is assistant professor of landscape architecture in the Knowlton School at Ohio State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226850935
• ISBN 13: 9780226850931
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 281