Associate Professor of History Rachel Gross's book, Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America (Yale University Press, 2024), was awarded the Colorado Book Award in History. The Colorado Book Awards, a program of Colorado Humanities and the Colorado Center for the Book, honors Colorado's rich literary heritage.
No escape to nature is complete without a trip to an outdoor recreational store or a browse through online offerings. This is the irony of the American outdoor experience: visiting wild spaces supposedly untouched by capitalism first requires shopping. Demonstrating that outdoor culture is commercial culture, Gross examines Americans’ journey toward outdoor expertise by tracing the development of the nascent outdoor goods industry, the influence of World War II on its growth, and the boom years of outdoor businesses.