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The Snow Leopard and the Goat

Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas

By Shafqat Hussain. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Following the downgrading of the snow leopard’s status from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2017, debate has renewed about the actual number of snow leopards in the wild...

The Organic Profit

Rodale and the Making of Marketplace Environmentalism

By Andrew N. Case. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Where did the curious idea of buying one’s way to sustainability come from? In no small part, the answer lies in the story of entrepreneurial health reformer J. I. Rodale, his son Robert Rodale, and...

Roses from Kenya

Labor, Environment, and the Global Trade in Cut Flowers

By Megan A. Styles. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Kenya supplies more than 35 percent of the fresh-cut roses and other flowers sold annually in the European Union. This industry—which employs at least 90,000 workers, most of whom are women—is lucrative but enduringly controversial....

Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories

Jarai and Other Lives in the Cambodian Highlands

By Jonathan Padwe. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

In the hill country of northeast Cambodia, just a few kilometers from the Vietnam border, sits the village of Tang Kadon. This community of hill rice farmers of the Jarai ethnic minority group survived aerial...

Fire

A Brief History

By Stephen J. Pyne

Over vast expanses of time, fire and humanity have interacted to expand the domain of each, transforming the earth and what it means to be human. In this concise yet wide-ranging book, Stephen J. Pyne—named...

Seismic City

An Environmental History of San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake

By Joanna L. Dyl. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

On April 18, 1906, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook the San Francisco region, igniting fires that burned half the city. The disaster in all its elements — earthquake, fires, and recovery — profoundly disrupted the urban...

Defending Giants

The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics

By Darren Frederick Speece. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Giant redwoods are American icons, paragons of grandeur, exceptionalism, and endurance. They are also symbols of conflict and negotiation, remnants of environmental battles over the limits of industrialization, profiteering, and globalization.

Since the middle of...

Razor Clams

Buried Treasure of the Pacific Northwest

By David Berger

In this lively history and celebration of the Pacific razor clam, David Berger shares with us his love affair with the glossy, gold-colored Siliqua patula and gets into the nitty-gritty of how to dig, clean,...

Caring for Glaciers

Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas

By Karine Gagné. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Regional geopolitical processes have turned the Himalayan region of Ladakh, in northwest India, into a strategic border area with an increasing military presence that has decentered the traditional agropastoralist economy. This in turn has led...

Racial Ecologies

By Leilani Nishime, Kim D. Hester Williams

From the Flint water crisis to the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy, environmental threats and degradation disproportionately affect communities of color, with often dire consequences for people’s lives and health. Racial Ecologies explores activist strategies and...

The Rise of West Lake

A Cultural Landmark in the Song Dynasty

By Xiaolin Duan

Lovely West Lake, near scenic Hangzhou on China’s east coast, has been celebrated as a major tourist site since the twelfth century. Now as then, visitors boat to its islands, stroll through its gardens, worship...

Environmental Justice in Postwar America

A Documentary Reader

By Christopher W. Wells, Paul S. Sutter

In the decades after World War II, the American economy entered a period of prolonged growth that created unprecedented affluence—but these developments came at the cost of a host of new environmental problems. Unsurprisingly, a...

Building Reuse

Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design

By Kathryn Rogers Merlino

In Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design, Kathryn Rogers Merlino makes an impassioned case that truly sustainable design requires reusing and reimagining existing buildings. The construction and operation of buildings is responsible...

Olympic National Park

A Natural History

By Tim McNulty

Renowned for its old-growth rain forest, wilderness coast, and glaciated peaks, Olympic National Park is a living laboratory for ecological renewal, especially as the historic Elwha River basin regenerates in the wake of dam removal....

Bringing Whales Ashore

Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan

By Jakobina K. Arch. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Today, Japan defends its controversial whaling expeditions by invoking tradition—but what was the historical reality? In examining the techniques and impacts of whaling during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), Jakobina Arch shows that the organized, shore-based...

Cultivating Nature

The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape

By Sarah R. Hamilton. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

The watery terrain of the Albufera Natural Park, an area ten kilometers south of Valencia that is widely regarded as the birthplace of paella, has long been prized by residents and visitors alike. Since the...

Cities That Think like Planets

Complexity, Resilience, and Innovation in Hybrid Ecosystems

By Marina Alberti

As human activity and environmental change come to be increasingly recognized as intertwined phenomena on a rapidly urbanizing planet, the field of urban ecology has risen to offer useful ways of thinking about coupled human...

Bike Battles

A History of Sharing the American Road

By James Longhurst

Americans have been riding bikes for more than a century now. So why are most American cities still so ill-prepared to handle cyclists? James Longhurst, a historian and avid cyclist, tackles that question by tracing...

The Rebirth of Bodh Gaya

Buddhism and the Making of a World Heritage Site

By David Geary

This multilayered historical ethnography of Bodh Gaya — the place of Buddha’s enlightenment in the north Indian state of Bihar — explores the spatial politics surrounding the transformation of the Mahabodhi Temple Complex into a...

The Tanoak Tree

An Environmental History of a Pacific Coast Hardwood

By Frederica Bowcutt

Tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) is a resilient and common hardwood tree native to California and southwestern Oregon. People’s radically different perceptions of it have ranged from treasured food plant to cash crop to trash tree. Having...