New Books in Environmental Studies

M. Margaret McKeown, "Citizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas" (Potomac Books, 2022)

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a giant in the legal world, even if he is often remembered for his four wives, as a potential vice-p...

Jennifer Wenzel, "The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature" (Fordham UP, 2019)

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How do literature and other cultural forms shape how we imagine the planet, for better or worse? In this rich, original, and long awaited book, Jennif...

Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk...

Abigail Perkiss, "Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey's Forgotten Shore" (Cornell UP, 2022)

28 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

After the tumultuous night of October 29, 2012, the residents of Monmouth, Ocean, and Atlantic Counties faced an enormous and pressing question: What ...

NBN Classic: Kate Brown, "Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future" (Norton, 2019)

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. We cannot learn from disasters...

NBN Classic: Harriet Washington, "A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind" (Little, Brown Spark, 2019)

24 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Environmental racism is visibl...

Raj Patel, "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things" (U California Press, 2017)

23 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Award winning activist and researcher Raj Patel has teamed up with innovative environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore to prod...

Andrea Ballestero, "A Future History of Water" (Duke UP, 2019)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Based on fieldwork among state officials, NGOs, politicians, and activists in Costa Rica and Brazil, A Future History of Water (Duke UP, 2019) trace...

Fred Spier, "How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers" (CRC Press, 2022)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers (CRC Press, 2022) offers a simple and novel theoretical approach to understandi...

Martin Kalb, "Environing Empire: Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa" (Berghahn, 2022)

21 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

German ambitions to transform Southwest Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were futile and resulted in the widespread death and sufferi...

Nancy Fraser, "Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It" (Verso, 2022)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for e...

Abby L. Goode, "Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability" (UNC Press, 2022)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this book, Abby L. Goode reveals the foundations of American environmentalism and its enduring connections to racism, eugenics, and agrarian ideals...

Joshua Duclos, "Wilderness, Morality, and Value" (Lexington Books, 2022)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What if wilderness is bad for wildlife? This question motivates the philosophical investigation in Wilderness, Morality, and Value (Lexington Books,...

Alex Nathanson, "A History of Solar Power Art and Design" (Routledge, 2021)

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Nathanson's book A History of Solar Power Art and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) ...

Philip Lymbery, "Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature-Friendly Future" (Bloombury, 2022)

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From the United Kingdom to Italy, from Brazil to the Gambia to the USA, Philip Lymbery, the internationally acclaimed author of Farmageddon, goes beh...

Mrill Ingram, "Loving Orphaned Space: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth" (Temple UP, 2022)

16 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How we relate to orphaned space matters. Voids, marginalia, empty spaces—from abandoned gas stations to polluted waterways—are created and maintai...

Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise

16 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Can spiritually and religiously inspired environmental movements in Asia help reach the global goal of environmental sustainability? This question lie...

Beronda L. Montgomery, "Lessons from Plants" (Harvard UP, 2021)

15 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We know that plants are important. They maintain the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. They nourish other living organisms ...

Jennifer L. Allen, "Sustainable Utopias: The Art and Politics of Hope in Germany" (Harvard UP, 2022)

14 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of...

Neoliberalism

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Troy Vettese talks with us about neoliberalism. It turns out the neoliberals aren’t actually a secret cabal of dastardly villains, ...

Erin James, "Narrative in the Anthropocene" (Ohio State UP, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Narrative in the Anthropocene (Ohio State UP, 2022), Erin James poses two complementary questions: What can narrative teach us about our current...

Peter S. Alagona, "The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities" (U California Press, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities (U California Press, 2022) tells the story of how cities across the United States we...

Jerry C. Zee, "Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chinese Weather System" (U California Press, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today Julia Keblinska and I had the pleasure of talking to Assistant Professor Jerry Zee about his book, Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chine...

Josh Milburn, "Just Fodder: The Ethics of Feeding Animals" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

31 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Animal lovers who feed meat to other animals are faced with a paradox: perhaps fewer animals would be harmed if they stopped feeding the ones they lov...

Frederico Freitas, "Nationalizing Nature: Iguazu Falls and National Parks at the Brazil-Argentina Border" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

26 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Nationalizing Nature: Iguazu Falls and National Parks at the Brazil-Argentina Border (Cambridge UP, 2021), Frederico Freitas uncovers the crucia...

Becky O'Connor, "The ESG Investing Handbook: Insights and Developments in Environmental, Social and Governance Investment" (Harriman House, 2022)

25 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As global governments and regulators set an agenda for net zero carbon emissions, the focus on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria amo...

Mathew Lawrence and Adrienne Buller, "Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis" (Verso, 2022)

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Adrienne Buller (The Value of a Whale) and Mathew Lawrence (Planet on Fire) have penned a radical manifesto for the transformation of post-pandemic...

Temperatures on the Rise: Adapting to Heat Extremes in South Asia

19 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Between March and May of this year, large parts of India and Pakistan were hit by a severe heat wave that claimed at least 90 lives and seriously impa...

The Poison Paradigm: What a Toxic Chemical Tells us about the Politics of Science

19 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We are exposed to thousands of toxic chemicals daily. This is no accident; it is by design. They are everywhere – coating our consumer products, in ...

Annah Lake Zhu, "Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China" (Harvard UP, 2022)

18 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Money does strange things to people, as Annah Lake Zhu notes in her latest book Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global Chin...

Paolo Squatriti, "Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750-900" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

17 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750–900 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paolo Squatriti ...

Ron Broglio, "Animal Revolution" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Animals are staging a revolution—they’re just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, Animal Rev...

Max Foran, "The Subjugation of Canadian Wildlife: Failures of Principle and Policy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018)

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hardly a day goes by without news of the extinction or endangerment of yet another animal species, followed by urgent but largely unheeded calls for a...

The Future of Net Zero: A Discussion with Eric Lonergan

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There is no shortage of words written about climate change and the goal of reaching net zero - but there is a shortage of practical suggestions about ...

Adam Sundberg, "Natural Disaster at the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

12 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

By the early eighteenth century, the economic primacy, cultural efflorescence, and geopolitical power of the Dutch Republic appeared to be waning. The...

J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, "The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945" (Harvard UP, 2016)

10 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Earth has entered a new age—the Anthropocene—in which humans are the most powerful influence on global ecology. Since the mid-twentieth centur...

Lindsay Starkey, "Encountering Water in Early Modern Europe and Beyond" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What is holding the oceans back from entirely flooding the earth? While a twenty-first century thinker may approach the answer to this question wit...

Environmental Catastrophe

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode John Yargo speaks with Kim about Environmental Catastrophe. In the episode John quotes Hannah Arendt and N.K. Jemisin, discusses a Sha...

Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, "Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie" (Companyédition PUF/Disclose, 2021)

08 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when you bring together an important collection of previously secret archival documents dealing with France's nuclear detonations in the ...

Michael J. Hathaway, "What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make" (Princeton UP, 2022)

08 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (Princeton University Press, 2022) by Dr. Michael Hathaway pushes today’s mushroom ...

China’s Role in the Future of Green Energy

05 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How green is green energy really? And what role does Asia, more specifically China play in the transition to green energy? On the 7th of July, Interna...

American Chernobyl, Part 2: The Most Poisonous Place in the USA

05 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hanford is the most-polluted place in America. In our last episode, you heard about the nuclear plant's largely-forgotten history--how it poisoned the...

America's Chernobyl, Part 1: Living in a Poison Town

04 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Cited: What it means to live in a place where your home can give you cancer. Richland, Washington is a company town that sprang up ...

Fred Delcomyn and James L. Ellis, "A Backyard Prairie: The Hidden Beauty of Tallgrass and Wildflowers" (Southern Illinois UP, 2021)

04 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2003 Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two and a half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie. Over...

Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, "Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity" (Routledge, 2020)

03 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (Routledge, 2020) brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self. Tema Milstein ...

Carl H. Nightingale, "Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

01 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is a biography of Earthopolis, the only Urban Planet we know of. It is a history of how cities gave humans immense power over Earth, for good and...

Yonatan Neril and Leo Dee, "Eco Bible: An Ecological Commentary on Genesis and Exodus" (ICSD, 2021)

29 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What does the Bible say about ecology? As people face huge ecological challenges-including growing hurricanes, floods, forest fires, and plastic pollu...

Erica Gies, "Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

29 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Trouble with water – increasingly frequent, extreme floods and droughts – is one of the first obvious signs of climate change. Meanwhile, urban sp...

The Battle of Buxton: Saving a Lighthouse in the Era of Climate Change

28 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you tuned in to our “ideas in strange places” themed programming last week, you would have heard an episode of Darts and Letters’ predecessor...

Nic Maclellan, "Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests" (ANU Press, 2017)

27 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nic Maclellan's book Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests (ANU Press, 2017) is a history of Britain’s 1950s program to test t...

Rosetta S. Elkin, "Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

20 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Rosetta S. Elkin explores the procedures of afforestation, the la...

Jeannie N. Shinozuka, "Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

15 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the late nineteenth century, increasing traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" when nurse...

Laura A. Ogden, "Loss and Wonder at the World’s End" (Duke UP, 2021)

15 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast Laura A. Ogden, cultural anthropologist at Dartmouth College, introduces her beautifully crafted book Loss and Wonder at the World...

Evan Berry, "Climate Politics and the Power of Religion" (Indiana UP, 2022)

14 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How does our faith affect how we think about and respond to climate change? Climate Politics and the Power of Religion (Indiana University Press, 202...

Nick Higham, "The Mercenary River: Private Greed, Public Good--A History of London's Water" (Headline, 2022)

13 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

No city can survive without water, and lots of it. Today we take the stuff for granted: turn a tap and it gushes out. But it wasn’t always so. For c...

Elena Conis, "How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT" (Bold Type Books, 2022)

13 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporati...

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo...

Tony Hall, "Great Trees of Britain and Ireland: Over 70 of the Best Ancient Avenues, Forests and Trees to Visit" (Read Media, 2022)

11 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Boasting Europe's largest number of ancient oaks and yews, Britain and Ireland are home to forests that can be traced back for centuries, feature amaz...

Meng Zhang, "Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market" (U Washington Press, 2021)

06 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on timber in Qing China, Dr. Meng Zhang's new book, Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market (U Washington Press, 2021) t...

Adrienne Buller, "The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism" (Manchester UP, 2022)

05 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to clim...

Max Ajl, "A People's Green New Deal" (Pluto Press, 2021)

05 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of a Green New Deal was launched into popular consciousness by US Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. It has become a watchword ...

Paul Dobryden, "The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Hygienic Apparatus: Weimar Cinema and Environmental Disorder (Northwestern UP, 2022) traces how the environmental effects of industrialization re...

James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti, "Atlas of the Invisible: Maps and Graphics That Will Change How You See the World" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

30 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Award-winning geographer-designer team James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti transform enormous datasets into rich maps and cutting-edge visualizations. In...

Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky, "Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power" (MIT Press, 2022)

29 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

An argument that social, political, and economic systems maintain power by discarding certain people, places, and things. Discard studies is an emergi...

Victor Seow, "Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

29 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Victor Seow’s Carbon Technocracy: Energy regimes in Modern East Asia (U Chicago Press, 2021) is an account of the modern “world that carbon mad...

Michael Hannah, "Extinctions: Living and Dying in the Margin of Error" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

28 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Michael Hannah about his book Extinctions: Living and Dying in the Margin of Error (Cambridge UP, 2021). Are we now entering a ma...

Min Hyoung Song, "Climate Lyricism" (Duke UP, 2022)

28 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Climate Lyricism (Duke University Press, 2022), Min Hyoung Song models a climate change-centered reading practice that helps us better understand...

Matthew T. Huber, "Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet" (Verso, 2022)

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of ‘believing science’ or individual ‘carbon footprints’ – it is a class problem rooted in who...

Juli Berwald, "Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs" (Riverhead Books, 2022)

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When they're thriving, these fairy gar...

Ellen Griffith Spears, "Rethinking the American Environmental Movement Post-1945" (Routledge, 2019)

15 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rethinking the American Environmental Movement Post-1945 (Routledge, 2019) turns a fresh interpretive lens on the past, drawing on a wide range of n...

Nadia Y. Kim, "Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA" (Stanford UP, 2021)

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The air in Los Angeles can be lethal, and nobody knows this better than the city’s Latinx and Asian immigrants, argues Dr. Nadia Kim in Refusing De...

Alison F. Richard, "Sloth Lemur's Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Madagascar is a place of change. A biodiversity hotspot and the fourth largest island on the planet, it has been home to a spectacular parade of anima...

Megan Kate Nelson, "Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America" (Scribner, 2022)

13 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1871 an expedition entered the territory now encompassed by Yellowstone National Park. Led by doctor and self-taught geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer...

Martin Williams, "When the Sahara Was Green: How Our Greatest Desert Came to Be" (Princeton UP, 2021)

10 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, equal in size to China or the United States. Yet, this arid expanse was once a verdant, pleasant la...

Wake Smith, "Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

09 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Reaching net zero emissions will not be the end of the climate struggle, but only the end of the beginning. For centuries thereafter, temperatures wil...

Marco Grasso, "From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis" (MIT Press, 2022)

08 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis (MIT Press, 2022), Marco Grasso examines the responsibility...

Gernot Wagner, "Geoengineering: The Gamble" (Polity, 2021)

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Stabilizing the world's climates means cutting carbon dioxide pollution. There's no way around it. But what if that's not enough? What if it's too dif...

Pavla Simková, "Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands" (U Massachusetts Press, 2021)

06 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Boston Harbor Islands have been called Boston's "hidden shores." While some are ragged rocks teeming with coastal wildlife, such as oystercatchers...

Chris Gratien, "The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier" (Stanford UP, 2022)

03 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I talk to Chris Gratien, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia, about his new book, The Unsettled Plain: A...

David George Haskell, "Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction" (Viking, 2022)

03 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect so...

Rob Dunn, "A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species" (Basic Book, 2021)

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our species has amassed unprecedented knowledge of nature, which we have tried to use to seize control of life and bend the planet to our will. In A ...

Sarah Mittlefehldt, "Tangled Roots: The Appalachian Trail and American Environmental Politics" (U Washington Press, 2013)

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Appalachian Trail, a thin ribbon of wilderness running through the densely populated eastern United States, offers a refuge from modern society an...

Paul Huebener, "Nature's Broken Clocks: Reimagining Time in the Face of the Environmental Crisis" (U Regina Press, 2020)

01 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Nature's Broken Clocks: Reimagining Time in the Face of the Environmental Crisis (University of Regina Press, 2020), Paul Huebener argues that ...

Stephen M. Wheeler and Christina D. Rosan, "Reimagining Sustainable Cities: Strategies for Designing Greener, Healthier, More Equitable Communities" (U California Press, 2021)

01 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What would it take to make urban places greener, more affordable, more equitable, and healthier for everyone? In recent years, cities have stepped up ...

Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we bre...

Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim, "Song of the Earth: Understanding Geology and Why It Matters" (Oxford UP, 2021)

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s podcast, Elisabeth Ervin-Blankenheim explains how understanding harmonics of the earth provides a forward-thinking methodology to confro...

Adam M. Romero, "Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture" (U California Press, 2021)

30 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In Ec...

Richard Seymour, "The Disenchanted Earth: Reflections on Ecosocialism and Barbarism" (Indigo Press, 2022)

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Disenchanted Earth: Reflections on Ecosocialism & Barbarism (Indigo Press, 2022), Richard Seymour, one of the UK's leading left-wing writers,...

Paul Morland, "Tomorrow's People: The Future of Humanity in Ten Numbers" (Picador, 2022)

25 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The great forces of population change – the balance of births, deaths and migrations – have made the world what it is today. They have determined ...

Kate Luce Mulry, "An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic" (NYU Press, 2021)

25 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Charles II ascended the English throne in 1660 after two decades of civil war, he was confronted with domestic disarray and a sprawling empire in...

John Markoff, "Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand" (Penguin, 2022)

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental moveme...

Diana McCaulay, "Daylight Come" (Peepal Tree Press, 2020)

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It is 2084. Climate change has made life on the Caribbean island of Bajacu a gruelling trial. The sun is so hot that people must sleep in the day and ...

Chris Begley, "The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival" (Basic Books, 2021)

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Pandemic, climate change, or war: our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dre...

Mayfair Yang, "Chinese Environmental Ethics: Religions, Ontologies, and Practices" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

An interdisciplinary collection in the new field of environmental humanities, Chinese Environmental Ethics: Religions, Ontologies, and Practices (Ro...

John Cardina, "Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly" (Comstock Publishing, 2021)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly (Comstock Publishing, 2021) explores the tangled history of weeds and their relationship to humans. T...

Liz Carlisle, "Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming" (Island Press, 2022)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A powerful movement is happening in farming today—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change. For one woman, that’s meant l...

Eve Darian-Smith, "Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis" (Stanford UP, 2022)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Recent years have seen out-of-control wildfires rage across remote Brazilian rainforests, densely populated California coastlines, and major cities in...

Scott Reynolds Nelson, "Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World" (Basic Books, 2022)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Grain traders wandering across the steppe; the Russian conquest of Ukraine (in the 18th century, that is); boulevard barons and wheat futures; railro...

Cleo Wölfle Hazard, "Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice" (U Washington Press, 2022)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rivers host vibrant multispecies communities in their waters and along their banks, and, according to queer-trans-feminist river scientist Cleo Wölfl...

Christopher W. Wells, "Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader" (U Washington Press, 2018)

20 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades after World War II, the American economy entered a period of prolonged growth that created unprecedented affluence—but these developm...