Straws in the wind

by Ronald Edward Zupko

The quest to create a decent world, to maintain a clean environment, and to nurture a self-renewing inheritance to pass on to future generations is not unique to the twentieth-century. Rather, as Ronald Zupko and Robert Laures show in this fascinating study of medieval environmental attitudes and regulations, it has been the recurring dream of men and women for centuries.The history of the medieval towns of northern and central Italy opens a window onto the concerns of urban elites throughout the medieval world regarding the environment and quality of life. In Straws in the Wind, the authors demonstrate that legislative efforts to control the environment were neither haphazard nor accidental. Rather, they were rational responses to perceived needs, often based on a valuable store of knowledge inherited from their Roman forebears. Zupko and Laures describe who these early environmentalists were, what motivated them, how they shaped the environmental programs they devised, and how they i