Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822–2011 by James R. Shortridge

ter 4, embodied the civilizing process for both the landscape and the Indigenous people of the Red River. First, Anderson saw civilizing as encompassing conversion and education: conversion to save souls and education to better prepare the Aboriginal population for European encroachment. For Anderson the landscape was similarly dichotomous. Th e Red River wilderness was hostile, alien, evil; however, tilling the soil could make it productive, familiar, and good. Anderson, therefore, used a message of civilization that was part religion and part agriculture. Other missionaries and settlers who traveled into Rupert’s Land understood that agriculture and settlement were synonymous with civilization, and so the landscape was changed by cutting down forests and plowing up native grasses. Historiographically, this book makes specifi c contributions to preConfederation Canadian history. Environmental, borderlands, and colonial historians, however, will fi nd value here as well. Perhaps what is most appealing about this work is that its author examines civilizing through stories of individual settlers and missionaries who saw the land through their cultural lens. By structuring his book about the people involved in the process, he has given a human face to an abstract concept.