New Books in Environmental Studies

Leah Stokes, "Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy" (Oxford UP, 2020)

28 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Why do even successful clean energy policies fail to create momentum for more renewable energy? In her new book Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Grou...

Anna M. Gade, “Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations” (Columbia UP, 2019)

24 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between Islam and the environment has a long and rich history across various Muslim societies. Anna M. Gade, Professor at the Univer...

Astrid M. Eckert, "West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands" (Oxford UP, 2019)

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How did the Iron Curtain shape the Federal Republic of Germany? How did the internal border become a proving ground for rival ideologies? West Germany...

J. L. Anderson, "Capitalist Pigs: Pigs, Pork, and Power in America" (West Virginia UP, 2019)

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with J. L. Anderson about the 2019 book Capitalist Pigs: Pigs, Pork, and Power in America published by...

Josh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019)

17 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Seven decades of military spending during the cold war and war on terror have created a vast excess of military hardware – what happens to all of th...

Alice Hill, "Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption" (Oxford UP, 2019)

10 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world c...

Lydia Barnett, "After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)

08 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many centuries before the emergence of the scientific consensus on climate change, people began to imagine the existence of a global environment: a na...

C. J. Alvarez, "Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide" (U Texas Press, 2019)

03 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Recent debates over the building of a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico divide have raised logistical and ethical issues, leaving the historical record o...

E. Wakild and M. K. Berry, "A Primer for Teaching Environmental History: Ten Design Principles" (Duke UP, 2018)

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Wakild and Michelle K. Berry have written a practical, informative, and inspiring guide to teaching environmental history. It also happens to be...

Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019)

30 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the h...

M. Schneider-Mayerson and B. R. Bellamy, "An Ecotopian Lexicon" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)

27 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

By choice or not, the catastrophes of global warming and mass extinction task young generations with reorienting human relationships with the earth’...

Darius Sollohub, "Millennials in Architecture: Generations, Disruption, and the Legacy of a Profession" (U Texas Press, 2019)

24 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Much has been written about Millennials, but until now their growing presence in the field of architecture has not been examined in depth. In an era o...

Jim Rossi, "Cleantech Con Artists: A True Vegas Caper" (2019)

24 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

After Jim Rossi began writing his M.A. thesis in History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the project took an unexpected turn. His research on ...

Hunter Vaughan, "Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies" (Columbia UP, 2019)

11 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (Columbia University Press, 2019), Hunter Vaughan offers ...

Michael R. Boswell, "Climate Action Planning: A Guide to Creating Low-Carbon, Resilient Communities" (Island Press, 2019)

06 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Climate Action Planning: A Guide to Creating Low-Carbon, Resilient Communities (Island Press, 2019) is designed to help planners, municipal staff and ...

Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)

03 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...

Sarah Marie Wiebe, "Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley" (UBC Press, 2016)

29 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In a foreword to Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley (University of British Columbia Pr...

Kate O'Neill, "Waste" (Polity, 2019)

26 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Waste is one of the planet’s last great resource frontiers. From furniture made from up-cycled wood to gold extracted from computer circuit boards, ...

Helen Rozwadowski, "Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans" (Reaktion Books, 2018)

15 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Rozwadowski talks about the history of the oceans and how these oceans have shaped human history in profound ways. Rozwadowski is a professor of...

Penelope Plaza Azuaje, “Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate" (Routledge, 2018)

15 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (R...

Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019)

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how...

Michael E. Mann, "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars : Dispatches from the Front Lines" (2012)

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We talk with Michael E. Mann, a Nobel Prize winner and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, about his journey through the cli...

Cara New Daggett, "Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work" (Duke UP, 2019)

04 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (Duke UP, 2019), Cara New Daggett suggests that reassessing our relationshi...

Elena Past, "Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human" (Indiana UP, 2019)

04 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Elena Past’s recently published Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human (Indiana University Press, 2019) studies a complex of issues surrounding on-loca...

Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...

David Biggs, "Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam" (U Washington Press, 2018)

31 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

By now we all know that Vietnam is a country, not a war. But how have decades, and even centuries, of war impacted the land of this southeast Asian na...

Ann Elias, "Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity" (Duke UP, 2019)

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With the threats of sea water warming and ocean acidification, coral reefs have become both a fire alarm and a barometer for the dangers of human indu...

J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...

Andrew C. Baker, "Bulldozer Revolutions: A Rural History of the Metropolitan South" (U Georgia Press, 2018)

18 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The history of metropolitan expansion and suburbanization is often written from the perspective of the city. In Bulldozer Revolutions: A Rural History...

Valerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)

18 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Valerie Olson talks about why the idea of outer space as a “frontier” is giving way to one that frames it as a cosmic ecosystem. Olson is an assoc...

Elizabeth DeLoughrey, "Allegories of the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)

15 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

While the mainstream discourses on global warming characterize it as an unprecedented catastrophe that unites the globe in a common challenge, Elizabe...

David D. Vail, "Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands since 1945" (U Alabama Press, 2019)

15 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Over fifty years ago, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) scolded the agricultural industry for its profligate spread of “poison” and pesticide...

Michitake Aso, "Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975" (UNC Press, 2018)

11 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How can the history of rubber be used as a way to understand the history of 20th-century Vietnam? In this episode of New Books in History, Michael G. ...

Jennifer L. Derr, "The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2019)

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of histo...

Stephen Hamnett, "Planning Singapore: The Experimental City" (Routledge, 2019)

07 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we talk with Stephen Hamnett about Planning Singapore: The Experimental City(Routledge, 2019), a book he edited with Belinda Yuen. Tw...

Don Kulick, "A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea" (Algonquin Books, 2019)

07 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Called "perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature" by ...

Nancy Langston, "Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World" (Yale UP, 2017)

01 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When people today visit or imagine Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, they often perceive a cold, remote, and pristine body of w...

Timothy LeCain, "The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

30 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Timothy LeCain is an award-winning environmental historian whose past work has focused on the connections between open-pit copper mines, technology, a...

Dolly Kikon, "Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India" (U Washington Press, 2019)

25 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India(University of Washington Press, 2019), anthropologist Dolly Kikon...

Joy McCann, "Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean" (U New South Wales Press, 2018)

13 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Joy McCann discusses the great circumpolar ocean that surrounds Antarctica. McCann is the author of Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean (Univers...

Kenneth Olwig, "The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Nature and Justice" (Routledge, 2019)

13 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Nature and Justice (Routledge, 2019), Kenneth Olwig presents explorations in landscape geography...

Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer, "Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)

10 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is the third of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene.  Also listen to m...

Bathsheba Demuth, "Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait" (W. W. Norton, 2019)

10 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Whales and walruses, caribou and fox, gold and oil: through the stories of these animals and resources, Bathsheba Demuth reveals how people have turne...

Dominic Boyer, "Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)

03 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is the second of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene.  Also listen to ...

Erik Loomis, "Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests" (Cambridge UP, 2016)

30 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests (Cambridge University Press, 2015), the historian Erik Loomis examines the relatio...

Cymene Howe, "Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke UP, 2019)

27 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is the first of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke University Pr...

Michael Kodas, "Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)

23 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1980s, fires burned an average of two million acres per year. Today the average is eight million acres and growing. Scientists believe that we ...

Kapila D. Silva and Amita Sinha, "Cultural Landscapes of South Asia : Studies in Heritage Conservation, and Management" (Routledge, 2017)

15 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The book today is Cultural Landscapes of South Asia : Studies in Heritage Conservation, and Management (Routledge, 2017) edited by Kapila D. Silva and...

Juan Javier Rivera Andía, "Non-Humans in Amerindian South America" (Berghahn, 2018)

12 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Non-Humans in Amerindian South America: Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals, and Songs (Berghahn, 2018), eleven researchers bring new ...

Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister, "Projective Ecologies" (HGSD, 2014)

09 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister's book  Projective Ecologies (Harvard Graduate School of Design 2014) is about how landscape architecture can move f...

Stefan Al, "Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise: Green and Gray Strategies" (Island Press, 2018)

05 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Stefan Al, PhD, is a native of the Netherlands, a low-lying county that would not exist without flood protection, is an architect, urban designer, and...

Sandra L. Albro, "Vacant to Vibrant: Creating Successful Green Infrastructure Networks" (Island Press, 2019)

30 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Vacant lots, so often seen as neighborhood blight, have the potential to be a key element of community revitalization. As manufacturing cities reinven...

David R. Montgomery, "Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life" (W. W. Norton, 2018)

26 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life (W. W. Norton & Co., 2018), Dr. David R. Montgomery portrays hope amidst the backdrop that for...

Elaine Hampton and Cynthia Ontiveros, "Copper Stain: ASARCO’s Legacy in El Paso" (U Oklahoma Press, 2019)

17 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Copper Stain: ASARCO’s Legacy in El Paso (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), Elaine Hampton and Cynthia Ontiveros tell the story of how a Mexic...

Laura Alice Watt, "The Paradox of Preservation: Wilderness and Working Landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore" (U California Press, 2016)

16 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Wilderness,” “nature,” and their “preservation” are concepts basic to how the National Park Service organizes our relationship to America...

Chika Watanabe, "Becoming One: Religion, Development, and Environmentalism in a Japanese NGO in Myanmar" (U Hawaii Press, 2019)

15 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Chika Watanabe’s Becoming One: Religion, Development, and Environmentalism in a Japanese NGO in Myanmar (University of Hawaii Press, 2019) is a rich...

Jakobina Arch, "Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan" (U Washington Press, 2018)

11 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan (University of Washington Press, 2018) is more than a history of whaling in J...

Douglas Sheflin, "Legacies of Dust: Land Use and Labor on the Colorado Plains" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)

10 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The “Dust Bowl” remains a mainstay in American history textbooks. When dust storms swept over the southern plains in the 1930s, they upended farmi...

Pankaj Sekhsaria, "Islands in Flux: The Andaman and Nicobar Story" (HarperCollins India, 2017)

09 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most consistent chronicler of contemporary issues in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Pankaj Sekhsaria's writings on the environment, wildl...

Philip W. Clements, "Science in an Extreme Environment: The American Mount Everest Expedition" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018)

28 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Historian of Science Philip W. Clements discusses the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. His book, Science in an Extreme Environment: The America...

David Munns, "Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest for Climate Control in the Cold War" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017)

24 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

“Phytotron” is such a great name for something that is, when you look at it, a high-tech greenhouse. But don’t sell it short! The phytotron was ...

David Karol, "Red, Green, and Blue: The Partisan Divide on Environmental Issues" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

21 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

David Karol’s new book, Red, Green, and Blue: The Partisan Divide on Environmental Issues (Cambridge University Press, 2019), examines the history o...

Gökçe Günel, "Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi" (Duke UP, 2019)

24 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Whether in space colonies or through geo-engineering, the looming disaster of climate change inspires no shortage of techno-utopian visions of human s...

Rosalyn LaPier, "Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet" (U Nebraska Press, 2017)

16 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers, and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet(University of Nebraska Press, 2017), author Rosalyn LaPie...

James L. A. Webb, "The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2016)

24 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It is estimated that malaria kills between 650,000 to 1.2 million people every year; experts believe that nearly 90 percent of these deaths occur in A...

E. MacDonald et al., "Time and a Place: An Environmental History of Prince Edward Island" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2016)

22 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With its long and well-documented history, Prince Edward Island makes a compelling case study for thousands of years of human interaction with a speci...

Kristin L. Hoganson, "The Heartland: An American History" (Penguin, 2019)

22 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Great West. Middle America. Flyover Country. The expanse of plains, lakes, forests, and farms, between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains has car...

Christopher Preston, "The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World" (MIT Press, 2018)

18 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In The Synthetic Age: Outdesigning Evolution, Resurrecting Species, and Reengineering Our World (MIT Press, 2018), Dr. Christopher Preston argues that...

Robert A. Voeks, "The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

04 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jungle medicine: it's everywhere, from chia seeds to ginseng tea to CBD oil.  In the US, what was once the province of counter culture has moved squa...

K. Kennen and N. Kirkwood, "Phyto: Principals and Resources for Site Remediation and Landscape Design" (Routledge, 2015)

22 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Environmental crises are making headlines in the news everyday. As public awareness increases about brownfields, pollutants, and water quality, Phyto:...

Tina Sikka, "Climate Technology, Gender, and Justice: The Standpoint of the Vulnerable" (Springer, 2019)

21 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How can feminist theory help address the climate crisis? In Climate Technology, Gender, and Justice: The Standpoint of the Vulnerable (Springer Verlag...

Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing

19 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...

Kate Ervine, "Carbon" (Polity, 2018)

12 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The crisis of global warming overwhelms the imagination with its urgency, yet more than ever we need patient, clear-sighted. and careful assessments o...

Rick Van Noy, "Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South" (U Georgia Press, 2019)

08 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As climate change politics abound, Dr. Rick Van Noy’s Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South (University of Georgia Press, ...

Global Oil and Social Change with Leif Wenar

05 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Leif Wenar the Chair of Philosophy and Law at Kings College London. He is the author of the 2016 book Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules tha...

Nicole Walker, "Sustainability, A Love Story" (Ohio State UP, 2018)

22 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today, I’m talking with Nicole Walker, who’s just published a new book about sustainability. In fact, that’s its title: Sustainability, A Love S...

Nicholas Breyfogle, "Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russia and Soviet History" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018)

15 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor at the Ohio State University, had produced a new edited volume, Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in I...

Eiko Maruko Siniawer, "Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan" (Cornell UP, 2018)

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Eiko Maruko Siniawer’s Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018) is an absorbing look at the multiple and changing ways that w...

Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018)

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The production and removal of garbage, as a key element of the daily infrastructure of urban life, is deeply embedded in social, moral, and political ...

Perrin Selcer, "The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment" (Columbia UP, 2018)

24 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Having been born into a world in which people knew about anthropogenic global warming, I grew up in the “global environment.” Although the categor...

Judd C. Kinzley, "Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China’s Borderlands" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

20 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As public knowledge grows of the Chinese state’s subjugation of the central Asian region of Xinjiang, many may find themselves wondering what Beijin...

Hannah Holleman, "Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of 'Green' Capitalism" (Yale UP, 2018)

17 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

None of the climate news that we’re getting is good right now, especially now that a number of governments are reversing or failing to meet commitme...

McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...

Amanda H. Lynch and Siri Veland, "Urgency in the Anthropocene" (MIT Press, 2018)

03 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Amanda Lynch and Siri Veland’s Urgency in the Anthropocene(MIT Press, 2018) is a fascinating and trenchant analysis of the core beliefs and ideas th...

James M. Turner and Andrew C. Isenberg, “The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump” (Harvard UP, 2018)

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It wasn’t always this way. From the Theodore Roosevelt’s leadership on natural resource conservation to Richard Nixon’s creation of the Environm...

Erin Stewart Mauldin, “Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South” (Oxford UP, 2018)

09 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The antebellum South was on the road to agricultural ruin, and the Civil War put a brick on the gas pedal. In Unredeemed Land: An Environmental Histor...

Kate Parker Horigan, “Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative” (UP of Mississippi, 2018)

09 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Parker Horigan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, and a co-editor of th...

Joanna Davidson, “Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa” (Oxford UP, 2015)

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a book about change. The...

Connie Chiang, “Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration” (Oxford UP, 2018)

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II is a well-known topic in American history and has been the subject of countess book...

Andrew M. Busch, “City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas” (UNC Press, 2017)

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Austin, Texas has a reputation as a vibrant, youthful capital city buoyed economically and culturally by the University of Texas. In City in a Garden:...

Venus Bivar, “Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France” (UNC Press, 2018)

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Venus Bivar documents the de...

Tim Jelfs, “The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism” (West Virginia UP, 2018)

12 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2018), Tim Jelfs argues that ...

Benjamin R. Siegel, “Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

05 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In his first book Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge University Press 2018), historian Benjamin Robert Siegel ex...

Christopher Dietrich, “Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization” (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

03 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The 1973 oil crisis was an event of world-historic proportions, but the stories we tell about it often center the Global North. For instance, the firs...

Megan Black, “The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power” (Harvard UP, 2018)

02 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Of all of the departments of the U.S. government you might expect to be implicated in the exercise of imperialism, the Department of the Interior migh...

Joan E. Cashin, “War Stuff: The Struggle for Human and Environmental Resources in the American Civil War” (Cambridge UP, 2018)

28 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Civil War was even more disastrous than we thought. Joan Cashin, already a distinguished scholar of the period, looks afresh at the war through th...

Ken Ilguas, “This Land is Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back” (Plume, 2018)

25 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Author, journalist and sometime park ranger Ken Ilgunas has written an argument in favor a “right to roam.”  This concept, unfamiliar to most Ame...

Steven Stoll, “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” (Hill and Wang, 2017)

19 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As you’ll hear in this interview with Steven Stoll, his latest book Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia (Hill and Wang, 2017) is “really a book...

 Megan Raby, “American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science” (UNC Press, 2017)

18 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

American science and empire have a long mutual history. In American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (University of North Carolina...

Joy McCann, “Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean” (NewSouth Publishing, 2018)

07 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book, Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean (NewSouth Publishing, 2018), historian Joy McCann explores the history of the vast Sou...