Nathan F. Sayre is professor and chair of geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author, most recently, of Working Wilderness: The Malpai Borderlands Group and the Future of the Western Range. He lives in Berkeley, CA.
The Politics of Scale provides a useful and interesting historical perspective on the development of range science as a merging of ecological understanding (some of it faulty), the economics of ranching and pastoralism, and land management policy. Rich in its historical coverage and distinctive in its focus on the evolving conceptions of range science and management, it effectively provides a genealogy of range science. I find myself reflecting frequently upon the ideas presented here. That, to me, is a mark of success. --David G. Havlick, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, author of No Place Distant: Roads And Motorized Recreation On America's Public Lands and coeditor of Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology, and Culture