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Bringing Whales Ashore

Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan

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

Japan today 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

Winner of the 2019 Turku Book Award from the European Society for Environmental History

The Albufera Natural Park, an area ten kilometers south of Valencia that is widely regarded as the birthplace of paella, has long...

Seeds of Control

Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea

By David Fedman. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1905–1945) ushered in natural resource management programs that profoundly altered access to and ownership of the peninsula’s extensive mountains and forests. Under the banner of “forest love,” the colonial government...

Communist Pigs

An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall

By Thomas Fleischman. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

The pig played a fundamental role in the German Democratic Republic’s attempts to create and sustain a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita...

Fir and Empire

The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China

By Ian M. Miller. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

The disappearance of China’s naturally occurring forests is one of the most significant environmental shifts in the country’s history, one often blamed on imperial demand for lumber. China’s early modern forest history is typically viewed...

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...

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...

Smell Detectives

An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America

By Melanie A. Kiechle. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

What did nineteenth-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the nineteenth-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary...

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...

The City Is More Than Human

An Animal History of Seattle

By Frederick L. Brown. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Winner of the 2017 Virginia Marie Folkins Award, Association of King County Historical Organizations (AKCHO)
Winner of the 2017 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize, Western History Association

Seattle would not exist without animals. Animals have played a...

Footprints of War

Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam

By David Biggs. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

When American forces arrived in Vietnam, they found themselves embedded in historic village and frontier spaces already shaped by many past conflicts. American bases and bombing targets followed spatial and political logics influenced by the...

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...

Making Climate Change History

Documents from Global Warming's Past

By Joshua P. Howe, Paul S. Sutter

This collection pulls together key documents from the scientific and political history of climate change, including congressional testimony, scientific papers, newspaper editorials, court cases, and international declarations. Far more than just a compendium of source...

Native Seattle

Histories from the Crossing-Over Place

By Coll Thrush. Foreword by William Cronon

This updated edition of Native Seattle brings the indigenous story to the present day and puts the movement of recognizing Seattle's Native past into a broader context. Native Seattle focuses on the experiences of local...

Nuclear Reactions

Documenting American Encounters with Nuclear Energy

By James W. Feldman, Paul S. Sutter

Nuclear Reactions explores the nuclear consensus that emerged in post–World War II America, characterized by widespread support for a diplomatic and military strategy based on nuclear weapons and a vision of economic growth that welcomed...

Behind the Curve

Science and the Politics of Global Warming

By Joshua P. Howe. Foreword by William Cronon

In 1958, Charles David Keeling began measuring the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. His project kicked off a half century of research that has expanded...

Whales and Nations

Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas

By Kurkpatrick Dorsey. Foreword by William Cronon

Before commercial whaling was outlawed in the 1980s, diplomats, scientists, bureaucrats, environmentalists, and sometimes even whalers themselves had attempted to create an international regulatory framework that would allow for a sustainable whaling industry. In Whales...

Wilderburbs

Communities on Nature's Edge

By Lincoln Bramwell. Foreword by William Cronon

Since the 1950s, the housing developments in the West that historian Lincoln Bramwell calls “wilderburbs” have offered residents both the pleasures of living in nature and the creature comforts of the suburbs. Remote from cities...

The Wilderness Writings of Howard Zahniser

By Mark W. T. Harvey, William Cronon

Howard Zahniser (1906–1964), executive secretary of The Wilderness Society and editor of The Living Wilderness from 1945 to 1964, is arguably the person most responsible for drafting and promoting the Wilderness Act in 1964. The...