Winner of the 2015 PROSE Award for US History A “fascinating, encyclopedic history…of greater New York City through an ecological lens” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review)—the sweeping story of one of the most man-made spots on earth. Gotham Unbound recounts the four-century history of how hundreds of square miles of open marshlands became home to six percent of the nation’s population. Ted Steinberg brings a vanished New York back to vivid, rich life. You will see the metropolitan area anew, not just as a dense urban goliath but as an estuary once home to miles of oyster reefs, wolves, whales, and blueberry bogs. That world gave way to an onslaught managed by thousands, from Governor John Montgomerie, who turned water into land, and John Randel, who imposed a grid on Manhattan, to Robert Moses, Charles Urstadt, Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg. “Weighty and wonderful…Resting on a sturdy foundation of research and imagination, Steinberg’s volume begins with Henry Hudson’s arrival aboard the Half Moon in 1609 and ends with another transformative event—Hurricane Sandy in 2012” ( The Plain Dealer , Cleveland). This book is a powerful account of the relentless development that New Yorkers wrought as they plunged headfirst into the floodplain and transformed untold amounts of salt marsh and shellfish beds into a land jam-packed with people, asphalt, and steel, and the reeds and gulls that thrive among them. With metropolitan areas across the globe on a collision course with rising seas, Gotham Unbound helps explain how one of the most important cities in the world has ended up in such a perilous situation. “Steinberg challenges the conventional arguments that geography is destiny….And he makes the strong case that for all the ecological advantages of urban living, hyperdensity by itself is not necessarily a sound environmental strategy” ( The New York Times ). *Starred Review* Environmental historian Steinberg (American Green, 2006) takes us to the Island of Many Hills, a teeming paradise rich in springs, marshes, forests, and wildlife. Four hundred years later, Mannahatta, now the borough of Manhattan, is utterly transformed. Steinberg believes that we will be more prepared for the future by knowing about New York’s ecologically lush past and all the financial, social, and political imperatives behind the phenomenal engineering feats that eradicated it. The massive changes began with the Dutch, who zealously drained wetlands and decimated oyster reefs, followed by the English, who dumped filthy fill into the harbor to extend the land out to deep water where ships could dock. With eye-popping facts and wide-ranging commentary, Steinberg tracks the acceleration of drainage, deforestation, and land-making as well as the booming human population, the building of an ever-more elaborate infrastructure, and the monstrous production of waste. As skyscrapers rose, biodiversity plummeted. Here, too, are telling profiles of the men responsible for Greater New York’s metamorphosis, from John Randel Jr., creator of the city’s grid plan, to the infamous urban mastermind, Robert Moses. Assessment of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation caps Steinberg’s fascinating and cautionary unnatural history, a staggering epic of human will, might, and folly that affirms a crucial truth, “the control of nature is an illusion.” --Donna Seaman "Steinberg accessibly traces the harbor’s natural history from the booming colonial market in underwater (literally) property and the prescient Manhattan grid plan, both of which fueled development, to the lessons delivered by Hurricane Sandy.... [Steinberg] challenges the conventional arguments that geography is destiny and that New York is an “infinite proposition” — a perpetually renewable resource. And he makes the strong case that for all the ecological advantages of urban living, hyperdensity by itself is not necessarily a sound environmental strategy" ― The New York Times "How did the lush ecosystems of the lower Hudson Valley become one of the world’s premier urban centers, dedicated to the illusion that it could somehow transcend the constraints of the natural world? Ted Steinberg’s explanation in Gotham Unbound is erudite, wise, unfailingly readable—and alarming as hell. This is environmental history at its best, and a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered what lies ahead for New York City." -- Edwin Burrows, coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize winning Gotham "Magnificently demonstrated in this unique, highly revealing history of Greater New York, prize-winning author Ted Steinberg is a pioneer in the field of ecological history. From Henry Hudson's magical discoveries in 1609 to Hurricane Sandy's rampant destruction, Steinberg narrates four centuries of never-ending landed fill-ins, destruction of estuaries, and building. Every page about this eastern landed frontier reveals the world's leading city from a fresh, crucially important perspective." -- Walter LaFeber, winner