One of the most critical environmental challenges facing both Californians and Australians in the 1860s involved the aftermath of the gold rushes. Settlers on both continents faced the disruptive impacts of mining, grazing, and agriculture; in response to these challenges, environmental reformers attempted to remake the natural environment into an idealized garden landscape. As this cutting-edge history shows, an important result of this nineteenth-century effort to "renovate" nature was a far-reaching exchange of ideas between the United States—especially in California—and Australia. Ian Tyrrell demonstrates how Californians and Australians shared plants, insects, personnel, technology, and dreams, creating a system of environmental exchange that transcended national and natural boundaries. True Gardens of the Gods traces a new nineteenth-century environmental sensibility that emerged from the collision of European expansion with these frontier environments.

Tyrrell traces historical ideas and personalities, provides in-depth discussions of introduced plants species (such as the eucalyptus and Monterey Pine), looks at a number of scientific programs of the time, and measures the impact of race, class, and gender on environmental policy. The book represents a new trend toward studying American history from a transnational perspective, focusing especially on a comparison of American history with the history of similar settler societies. Through the use of original research and an innovative methodology, this book offers a new look at the history of environmentalism on a regional and global scale.

Ian Tyrrell is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He is the author of The Absent Marx: Class Analysis and Liberal History in Twentieth Century America (1986), and Woman's World/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective (1991).

"Gold rushes transformed California and Australia within a few years in the mid-19th century. millions of Argonauts and diggers came to rip their fortune from the land. It was not a pretty sight. But with them, as Ian Tyrrell records in True Gardens of the Gods, came landscape gardeners anxious to recreate Eden in these temples to greed."—New Scientist

"This is a wonderful book, rich in detail and concept,that recounts the efforts of social dreamers and entrepreneurs to create 'True Gardens of the Gods' in widely separated but importantly similar parts of the world. It is highly recommended."—California History

"Now, the linkages and exchanges which developed between California and Australia as both societies experimented with ways of adapting to common problems of environmental reform, have been documented and interpreted brilliantly in this book by Ian Tyrrell. . . . He provides informative detail, but also perspective and vision. Quite simply, True Gardens of the Gods is a tour de force of scholarly history. Few, if any, people will read it and not learn a great deal of value."—John Muir Newsletter

"Wealth or happiness—that is the subject of this surprising and timely book, a meticulously rsearched compendium of 70 years that linked the history of the sun-drenched state of California with the sun-burned country of Australia. . . . The lessons detailed in this true-life Victorian cautionary tale must be read by every environmentalist, sociologist or globocrat who thinks they have the solution tot he environmental or the economic problems of the world."—Endeavour