New Books in Environmental Studies
Episodes
Seth Archer, “Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778-1855” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778-1855 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Utah State Universi...
G. Mitman, M. Armiero and R. S. Emmett (eds.), “Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene (University of Chicago Press, 2018) curates fifteen objects that might serve as evidence...
Joanna Dyl, “Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake” (U Washington Press, 2017)
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco’s 1906 Earthquake (University of Washington Press, 2017), Joanna Dyl documents the course...
Jim Clifford, “West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshlands, 1839-1914” (UBC Press, 2017)
24 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshlands, 1839-1914 (University of British Columbia P...
Michelle Perro and Vincanne Adams, “What’s Making Our Children Sick?” (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017)
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Pediatrician and integrative medicine practitioner Michelle Perro, MD, has been treating an increasing number of children with complex chronic illness...
William D. Bryan, “The Price of Permanence: Nature and Business in the New South” (U Georgia Press, 2018)
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Southern capitalists of the postbellum era have been called many things, but never conservationists. Until now. Environmental historian William D. Bry...
Sumana Roy, “How I Became a Tree” (Aleph, 2017)
07 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sumana Roy‘s first book How I Became a Tree (Aleph, 2017) is impossible to classify. Part-philosophical tract, part-memoir and part-literary critici...
Casey Walsh, “Virtuous Waters: Mineral Springs, Bathing, and Infrastructure in Mexico” (U California Press, 2018).
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Water politics have long figured prominently in Mexico, and scholars have addressed such critical topics as irrigation, dam and canal building, and re...
Courtney Fullilove, “The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
31 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (University of Chicago Press, 2017) examines the social and political history of how...
Joëlle Gergis, “Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia” (Melbourne UP, 2018)
27 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2018), Joëlle Gergis, a clim...
John Mackay, “The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle Over the Greatest Riches in the American West” (Scribner, 2018)
20 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Mackay’s life began humbly, immigrating as a child from an impoverished Irish household to New York City where he worked selling newspapers in ...
Norah MacKendrick, “Better Safe Than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics” (U California Press, 2018).
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Consumers today have a lot of choices. Whether in stores or online, people are inundated by an abundance of options for what to buy. At the same time,...
Eric Winsberg, “Philosophy and Climate Science” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
16 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that there is a warming trend in the global climate that is attributable to human activit...
Darren Speece, “Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics” (U Washington Press, 2017)
12 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Northern California’s giant redwoods are among the state’s most recognizable natural wonders. These massive trees were also under threat of clear-...
Keith M. Woodhouse, “The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism” (Columbia UP, 2018)
06 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Environmentalists often talk like revolutionaries but agitate like reformers. But however moderate its tactics, environmentalism has led Americans to ...
Jeff Koelher, “Where the Wild Coffee Grows: The Untold Story of Coffee from the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup” (Bloomsbury, 2017)
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is life without coffee possible? Before you answer, first admit that you know almost nothing about the plant that you depend on to deliver you conscio...
Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey, “Waste of a Nation: Growth and Garbage in India” (Harvard UP, 2018)
29 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Is India facing a waste crisis? As its population, cities and consumption grow what are the implications for the health, well being and everyday lives...
Peter Sahlins, “1668: The Year of the Animal in France” (Zone Books, 2017)
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture ...
Brian James Leech, “The City That Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit” (U Nevada Press, 2018)
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The plight of today’s coal miners has gained significant attention in recent U.S. politics. As coal mining practices and technologies change in the ...
Andrew Needham, “Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest” (Princeton UP, 2016)
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Researching and writing about infrastructure is a tall task. Infrastructure’s vastness, complexity, and, if it’s functioning, invisibility can def...
Melanie A. Kiechle, “Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America” (U Washington Press, 2017)
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Melanie Kiechle‘s Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America (University of Washington Press, 2017) takes us into th...
Andre Magnan, “When Wheat Was King: The Rise and Fall of the Canada-UK Grain Trade” (U British Columbia Press, 2016)
06 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In When Wheat Was King: The Rise and Fall of the Canada-UK Grain Trade (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), André Magnan connects the cultiv...
Ann K. Ferrell, “Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century” (U Press of Kentucky, 2013)
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ann K. Ferrell is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Folk Studies program at Western Kentucky University, and also Editor-in-Chief of the ...
Anna Zeide, “Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry” (U California Press, 2018)
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most everything Americans eat today comes out of cans. Some of it emerges from the iconic steel cylinders and much of the rest from the mammoth proces...
Steven Gray, “Steam Power and Sea Power: Coal, the Royal Navy, and the British Empire, c. 1870-1914” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Steam Power and Sea Power: Coal, the Royal Navy, and the British Empire, c. 1870-1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Steven Gray examines the pivotal ...
Natasha Zaretsky, “Radiation Nation: Three Mile Island and the Political Transformation of the 1970s” (Columbia UP, 2018)
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What if modern conservatism is less a reaction to environmentalism than a mutation of it? Historian Natasha Zaretsky’s latest book, Radiation Nation...
Debarati Sen, “Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in Darjeeling” (SUNY Press, 2017)
06 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in Darjeeling (SUNY Press, 2017), Debarati Sen analyzes the paradoxes and ...
Chad Montrie, “The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism” (U California Press, 2018)
05 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Uncle Tom’s Cabin didn’t start the Civil War and Silent Spring didn’t start the environmental movement. In The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking...
Timothy Neale, “Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia” (U Hawaii Press, 2017)
02 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Tim Neale examines the controversy o...
Frederick L. Brown, “The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle” (U Washington Press, 2016)
30 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Not all city dwellers are bipedal, according to Frederick L. Brown, author of The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (University of...
Urmi Engineer Willoughby, “Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteeth-Century New Orleans” (LSU Press, 2017)
23 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A disease cannot be fully understood unless considered in its environmental context. That conviction drives Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Ninetee...
Peter A. Kopp, “Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley” (U California Press, 2016)
09 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Environmental historian Peter A. Kopp‘s book Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley (University of California Pre...
Dagomar Degroot, “The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560 -1720” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
14 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Historians, writes Dagomar Degroot, rarely feature in discussions about global warming. With his new book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the ...
Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther, “The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters” (Wharton Digital Press, 2017))
07 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters (Wharton Digital Press, 2017), Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther summarize six major cognit...
Andy Bruno, “The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
30 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What can be learned about the Soviet Union by viewing it through an environmental lens? What would an environmental history teach us about power in th...
Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South: Interracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi” (U of Georgia Press, 2018)
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agri...
Jacob Smith, “Eco-Sonic Media” (University of California Press, 2015)
18 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Can we have sound media that is ecologically sound? Can we fine tune our media production and consumption habits to a greener key? How can an environm...
Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago” (Harvard UP, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North...
Christopher Church, “Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean” (U. Nebraska Press, 2017)
18 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Hurricanes, fires, a volcano eruption: disasters are political, as Christopher Church argues. His new book, Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citize...
Sam White, “A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America” (Harvard UP, 2017)
15 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sam White’s brand new book A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America (Harvard University Press, 2017) turns the...
Dan Flores, “Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History” (Basic Books, 2016)
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Wile E. Coyote has a family tree with many roots and branches, argues University of Montana A.B. Hammond Professor Emeritus Dan Flores in his recent b...
Andrew S. Tompkins, “Better Active than Radioactive! Anti-Nuclear Protest in 1970s France and West Germany” (Oxford UP, 2016)
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in western Europe over the 1970s. Observers feared Germany was becoming “ungovernable” and Fra...
John Ryan Fischer, “Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i” (UNC Press, 2015)
13 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John Ryan Fischer‘s book Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i (University of North Carolina Pres...
Climate Change Skepticism with Lawrence Torcello
02 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How does corporate misinformation and partisan skepticism effect what we know about climate change? Lawrence Torcello is an Associate Professor of Phi...
Tore C. Olsson, “Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside” (Princeton UP, 2017)
23 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tore C. Olsson‘s Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside (Princeton University Press, 2017) tells a remarka...
Rebecca Jones, “Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia” (Monash UP, 2017)
06 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia (Monash University Publishing, 2017), Rebecca Jones, a senior research fellow at Monash Univers...
Sara Dant, “Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016)
22 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From Frederick Jackson Turner to Walter Prescott Webb, the high cliffs of Yosemite to the flat deserts and blasted rock of the Nevada Test Range, the ...
Nicholas C. Kawa, “Amazonia in the Anthropocene: People, Soils, Plants, and Forests” (U. Texas Press, 2016)
05 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Widespread human alteration of the planet has led many scholars to claim that we have entered a new epoch in geological time: the Anthropocene, an age...
Scott Moranda, “The People’s Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism and Dictatorship in East Germany” (U. Michigan Press, 2014)
19 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The new German Democratic Republic, known as East Germany, faced many challenges when it was founded in 1949. Not least of which was convincing its ci...
Alice Weinreb, “Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany” (Oxford UP, 2017)
13 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Food is a hot topic these days, and not just among the folks posting pictures of their dinner on Instagram. A growing number of scholars in many field...
Eric Ash, “The Draining of the Fens: Projectors, Popular Politics, and State Building in Early Modern England” (Johns Hopkins, 2017)
02 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today “The Fens” is largely a misnomer, as the area of eastern England is now largely flat, dry farmland. Until the early modern era, however, it ...
Melvin R. Adams, “Atomic Geography: A Personal History of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation” (Washington State University Press, 2016)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In May, a tunnel filled with radioactive waste collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, making international news. This incid...
Susanna Forrest, “The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017)
29 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The history of humanity is intertwined with that of the horse to such a degree that it is no exaggeration to say that the existence of either species ...
Benjamin Heber Johnson, “Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation” (Yale UP, 2017)
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The turn of the twentieth century caught America at a crossroads, shaking the dust from a bygone era and hurtling toward the promises of modernity. Fa...
Kate Daloz, “We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America” (PublicAffairs, 2016)
14 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in a geodesic dome is not a claim everyone can make, but author Kate Daloz can. Her book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a...
Jonathan Schlesinger, “A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule” (Stanford UP, 2017)
13 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Schlesinger‘s new book makes a compelling case for the significance of Manchu and Mongolian sources and archival sources in particular in t...
Helen Anne Curry, “Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
08 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Nowadays, it might seem perplexing for the founder of a seed company to express the intention to “shock Mother Nature,” or at least in bad taste. ...
Benjamin Hale, “The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature” (MIT Press, 2016)
15 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Many environmentalists approach the problem of motivating environmentally friendly behavior from the perspective that nature is good and that we ought...
Veronica Herrera, “Water and Politics: Clientelism and Reform in Urban Mexico” (U. Michigan Press, 2017)
06 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Veronica Herrera has written Water & Politics: Clientelism and Reform in Urban Mexico (University of Michigan Press, 2017). Herrera is assistant profe...
Stacy Alaimo, “Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)
21 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Stacy Alaimo’s Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) is a provocative reflection on...
John Hadley, “Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals” (Lexington Books, 2015)
09 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John Hadley’s Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals (Lexington Books, 2015) presents a novel approach to addressing ha...
Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)
04 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a ...
Anthony Lioi, “Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)
20 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Anthony Lioi examines literature, film, television, and comic...
Joshua Howe, “Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
10 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, and in recent months, drought and searing heat have fanned wildfires in Fort McMurray Alberta and in Gat...
Pamela McElwee, “Forest are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental Rule in Vietnam” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
17 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Forests are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental Rule in Vietnam (University of Washington Press, 2016) begins with two related puzzles: why does Vie...
Jessica van Horssen, “A Town Called Asbestos” (UBC Press, 2016)
12 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, Canada stopped mining and exporting asbestos. Once considered a miracle mineral for its fireproof qualities, asbestos came to be better known...
Susan Verde, “The Water Princess” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2016)
29 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Supermodel Georgie Badiel grew up in a small village in Burkina Faso where the closest source of water was many miles from home. After launching her s...
Harini Nagendra, “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future” (Oxford UP, 2016)
26 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2016), Harini Nagendra traces centuries of interaction bet...
Caroline Ford, “Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France” (Harvard UP, 2016)
12 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Caroline Ford’s Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France (Harvard University Press, 2016) explores the roots of French envir...
William Cavert, “The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Air pollution may seem to be a problem uniquely of the modern age, but in fact it is one that has bedeviled people throughout history. In his book The...
James Rodger Fleming, “Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology” (MIT Press, 2016)
26 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book about the future – the historical future as three interconnected generations of atmospheric researchers experienced it and envisioned...
Simanti Dasgupta, “BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India” (Temple UP, 2015)
17 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What links a water privatization scheme and a prominent software company in India’s silicon city, Bangalore? Simanti Dasgupta’s new book, BITS of ...
Kieko Matteson, “Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict, 1669-1848” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
03 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Kieko Matteson’s Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict, 1669-1848 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) is an impressi...
Lisa Bjorkman, “Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai” (Duke UP, 2015)
02 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Mumbai is in many ways the paradigmatic city of India’s celebrated economic upturn, but the city’s transformation went hand-in-hand with increasin...
Marta Zaraska, “Meathooked: The History and Science of our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat” (Basic Books, 2016)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Here in the U.S. we’ve just celebrated the Fourth of July, with its parades, fireworks, and, of course, cook-outs. If you’re like me, the smell of...
Sarah Wald, “The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl” (U. of Washington Press, 2016)
28 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The California farmlands have long served as a popular symbol of America’s natural abundance and endless opportunity. Yet, from John Steinbeck’s T...
Kenna R. Archer, “Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River” (U of New Mexico, 2015)
09 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River (University of New Mexico, 2015), Kenna R. Archer examines the history of the...
Eben Kirksey, “Emergent Ecologies” (Duke UP, 2015)
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among...
Naomi Klein, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” (Simon and Schuster, 2014)
24 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Canadian author and journalist Naomi Klein says right-wing conservatives who deny the reality of global warming are correct about the revolutionar...
Dale Jamieson, “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for Our Future” (Oxford UP, 2014)
21 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How are we to think and live with climate change? In Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for O...
Peter Thorsheim, “Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
17 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War (Cambridge University Press 2015), Peter Thorsheim explores the role of waste ...
Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton UP, 2015)
06 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-F...
Stephen Macekura, “Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
04 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Today, sustainability is all the rage. But when and why did the idea of sustainable development emerge, and how has its meaning changed over time? St...
Jason W. Moore, “Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital” (Verso, 2015)
03 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (Verso, 2015), author Jason W. Moore seeks to undermine popular understandin...
Richard C. Keller, “Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
23 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In August 2003, a heat wave in France killed close to 15,000 people, the majority of whom were over 75. Prominent among the dead were a group of victi...
Nicole Starosielski, “The Undersea Network” (Duke UP, 2015)
25 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole Starosielski‘s new book brings an environmental and ecological consciousness to the study of digital media and digital systems, and it is a m...
Candis Callison, “How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Duke UP, 2014)
14 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Candis Callison‘s timely and fascinating new book considers climate change as a form of life and articulates how journalists, scientists, religious ...
Henry Shue, “Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection” (Oxford UP, 2014)
21 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How can a practical philosophical perspective concerned with justice and fairness help us address the problem of climate change? Henry Shue (Merton Co...
Tom Perreault, Gavin Bridge, and James McCarthy, eds., “The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology” (Routledge, 2015)
10 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Political ecology is among the most vibrant sub-fields in the discipline of geography. Since the field first developed in the 1980s, political ecologi...
Julie Sze, “Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis” (U of California Press, 2015)
19 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Julie Sze‘s new book opens by bringing readers into the wetlands of Dongtan, introducing us to an ambitious but unrealized project to create the “...
Finis Dunaway, “Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images” (
11 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Oil-soaked birds in Prince William Sound. The “crying Indian” in a 1970s anti-littering ad. A lonely polar bear on an Arctic ice floe. Such enviro...
Eben Kirksey, “The Multispecies Salon” (Duke University Press, 2014)
10 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Eben Kirksey‘s wonderful new volume is an inspiring introduction to a kind of multispecies ethnography where artists, anthropologists, and others co...
Andrew Needham, “Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest” (Princeton UP, 2014)
26 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “S...
Thom van Dooren, “Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction” (Columbia UP, 2014)
17 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Thom van Dooren‘s new book is an absolute must-read. (I was going to qualify that with a “…for anyone who…” and realized that it really need...
David A. Pietz, “Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China” (Harvard UP, 2015)
06 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
David A. Pietz‘s new book argues that China’s water challenges are historically grounded, and that these historical realities are not going to dis...
Carolyn Finney, “Black Faces, White Spaces” (UNC Press, 2014)
17 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Geographer Carolyn Finney wrote Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (University of Nort...
Edmund Russell, “Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth” (
11 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Evolution is among the most powerful ideas in the natural sciences. Indeed, the evolutionary theoristTheodosius Dobzhansky famouslysaid nothing in bio...
Sally Weintrobe, “Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives” (Routledge, 2012)
11 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How up to date are you on the projected impact of climate change on human civilization in the next 100 years? Once you look at latest predictions, qui...
Robert Cribb, Helen Gilbert, Helen Tiffin, “Wild Man from Borneo: A Cultural History of the Orangutan” (U of Hawaii Press, 2014)
15 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Cribb and his co-authors Helen Gilbert and Helen Tiffin have together drawn on the resources of history, literature, film, science, and cultura...
Matthew Huber, “Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital” (U of Minnesota Press, 2013)
17 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) is an incisive look into how oil permeates our lives and hel...