• “This insightful environmental history is a cautionary story about the true cost of the unenlightened commodification of Lake Superior. Like the Anishinaabe whose stewardship Nancy Langston chronicles, she invokes Seventh Generation thinking: make wise decisions today based on the best interests of future generations.”—Patty Loew, Bad River Anishinaabe

• “A stirring biography of a most important place. Writing with insight and passion at the confluence of geography, ecology, and history, Nancy Langston connects the human story to that of the world’s largest lake, an enigma to many of us and an endangered species that affects all of us. Her voice is clear and honest, though never judgmental; it conveys welcome answers and hope for the future.”—Jack E. Davis, author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea 

• "Nancy Langston has presented us with a masterful and vividly written study of the impact of industrial pollution, invasive species, and habitat loss on the world's largest freshwater lake. But it is her inquiry into the effects of climate change on Lake Superior that make this book the Silent Spring of freshwater ecology.”—Jerry Dennis, author of The Living Great Lakes and The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes

• "Nancy Langston’s Sustaining Lake Superior is a wonderful book and an excellent addition to her existing body of work. Combining detailed historical and scientific evidence with penetrating insights into broader global issues, the book has much to offer not only to those interested in the environmental history of Lake Superior but also to anyone concerned with the fate of the planet.”—Tim LeCain, author of Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet

• “A Great Lake deserves a great book, and Nancy Langston has written it. Carefully researched, scientifically literate, appropriately transnational, handsomely illustrated, and engagingly written, this book is a shining example of environmental history at its best.”—J.R. McNeill, co-author of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945

• “Langston has written nothing less than the definitive biography of the Greatest Lake, from its birth right up to its current encounter with climate change. It is a wonderful, moving story, and as she eloquently describes, a new and challenging chapter must now be written.”—James Gustave Speth, former Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy

• “With passion and grace, Nancy Langston explores why environmental policies have achieved such mixed results. Lake Superior reveals how environmental ideas sufficient for one era too often fail in another.”—Richard White, Stanford University and author of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America and The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River

• “In Sustaining Lake Superior, Nancy Langston takes stock of the big lake and the surrounding region. She dives into to the geology, biology, and human dimensions and shows how they are all intertwined. This fascinating book makes it clear why Lake Superior deserves our respect and protection: we are part of the lake, and the lake is part of us.”—William Rapai, author of Lake Invaders: Invasive Species and the Battle For the Future of the Great Lakes

• “The deep originality of this work consists not just in its oddly specific subject, Lake Superior, but also in its general and iterative argument about there being several very different kinds and scales of causality at work, both in environmental degradation and in restoration.”—Colin Duncan, author of The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature

• "Historian and activist Langston (environmental history, Michigan Technological Univ.; Toxic Bodies) seeks to capture the dynamism and significance of the largest lake in the world, from its fascinating social history to its unique relationship to global issues of pollution, recovery, industrialization, and climate change. Beginning with Lake Superior's ecological history, the book quickly moves into the massive and unfortunate impacts of the pulp, paper, and mining industries of the surrounding region from the late 19th century to the present. Various efforts to regulate water quality and reduce harmful pollutants over the years are also chronicled; many too little or too late, as Langston makes clear through a convincing combination of historical evidence and personal commentary. Readers are left encouraged to take action for the sake of Lake Superior as much as the wonders of their own backyards. VERDICT An engrossing cautionary tale for lovers of nature and the Great Lakes in particular. Recommended for students and enthusiasts of environmental science and history."--Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle" Library Journal, Nov. 1, 2017

• "Sustaining Lake Superior is thoroughly researched and well documented, passionately written and easy to read…the author has managed an incredible feat in painting the complex environmental history of the lake. Sustaining Lake Superior reminds us that we have put Lake Superior through a lot in the last three hundred years, and that we must keep working to protect her, and ourselves....Langston challenges us to be vigilant, voice our concerns, join with others, and sometimes be prepared to fight long battles. As Langston writes, “Lake Superior’s history teaches us that human histories are intimately linked to the watershed, and the quality of water determines the quality of life.”-- Agate Magazine

• In her new book Sustaining Lake Superior; An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World, Professor Nancy Langston of Michigan Technological University chronicles the history of the lake, its decline, and its resurrection. She also looks to the future as, seemingly heedless of the lessons history should have taught us, new environmental threats now loom over its only recently rejuvenated waters.-- The Well-Read Naturalist

• “Lake Superior can swallow all the other Great Lakes whole and then go back for additional helpings of Erie. Yet neither Lake Superior, nor the other constituent parts of the world’s largest freshwater system, has received much attention from North American environmental historians. Nancy Langston’s excellent Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World will go a long way toward rectifying this blind spot.…The author’s passion for this place jumps off the pages. As noted in the preface, Langston lives and teaches on the shores of Lake Superior. The resulting place-based insights, however, do not result in an insular book, for the author repeatedly illuminates the local-global interface including processes such as toxin migration in the atmosphere" --Daniel Macfarlane in Environmental History