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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...

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...

Loving Nature, Fearing the State

Environmentalism and Antigovernment Politics before Reagan

By Brian Allen Drake. Foreword by William Cronon

A "conservative environmental tradition" in America may sound like a contradiction in terms, but as Brian Allen Drake shows in Loving Nature, Fearing the State, right-leaning politicians and activists have shaped American environmental consciousness since...

Nature Next Door

Cities and Trees in the American Northeast

By Ellen Stroud. Foreword by William Cronon

The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes...

Tutira

The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station

By Herbert Guthrie-Smith. Foreword by William Cronon

Car Country

An Environmental History

By Christopher W. Wells. Foreword by William Cronon

For most people in the United States, going almost anywhere begins with reaching for the car keys. This is true, Christopher Wells argues, because the United States is Car Country—a nation dominated by landscapes that...

The Republic of Nature

An Environmental History of the United States

By Mark Fiege. Foreword by William Cronon

In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered...

Tangled Roots

The Appalachian Trail and American Environmental Politics

By Sarah Mittlefehldt. Foreword by William Cronon

The Appalachian Trail, a thin ribbon of wilderness running through the densely populated eastern United States, offers a refuge from modern society and a place apart from human ideas and institutions. But as environmental historian—and...

Pests in the City

Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats

By Dawn Day Biehler. Foreword by William Cronon

From tenements to alleyways to latrines, twentieth-century American cities created spaces where pests flourished and people struggled for healthy living conditions. In Pests in the City, Dawn Day Biehler argues that the urban ecologies that...

Vacationland

Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country

By William Philpott. Foreword by William Cronon

Winner of the Western Writers of America 2014 Spur Award for Best Western Nonfiction, Contemporary

Mention the Colorado high country today and vacation imagery springs immediately to mind: mountain scenery, camping, hiking, skiing, and world-renowned resorts...

George Perkins Marsh

Prophet of Conservation

By David Lowenthal. Foreword by William Cronon

George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was the first to reveal the menace of environmental misuse, to explain its causes, and to prescribe reforms. David Lowenthal here offers fresh insights, from new sources, into Marsh’s career and...

The Promise of Wilderness

American Environmental Politics since 1964

By James Morton Turner. Foreword by William Cronon

From Denali's majestic slopes to the Great Swamp of central New Jersey, protected wilderness areas make up nearly twenty percent of the parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands that cover a full fourth...

Pumpkin

The Curious History of an American Icon

By Cindy Ott. Foreword by William Cronon

Why do so many Americans drive for miles each autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans reserve it...

Wilderness Forever

Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act

By Mark W. T. Harvey. Foreword by William Cronon

Winner of the Forest History Society's 2006 Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award

As a central figure in the American wilderness preservation movement in the mid-twentieth century, Howard Zahniser (1906-1964) was the person most responsible for the...

The Rhine

An Eco-Biography, 1815–2000

By Mark Cioc. Foreword by William Cronon

The Rhine River is Europe’s most important commercial waterway, channeling the flow of trade among Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In this innovative study, Mark Cioc focuses on the river from the moment when...

Where Land and Water Meet

A Western Landscape Transformed

By Nancy Langston. Foreword by William Cronon

Water and land interrelate in surprising and ambiguous ways, and riparian zones, where land and water meet, have effects far outside their boundaries. Using the Malheur Basin in southeastern Oregon as a case study, this...

Driven Wild

How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement

By Paul S. Sutter. Foreword by William Cronon

In its infancy, the movement to protect wilderness areas in the United States was motivated less by perceived threats from industrial and agricultural activities than by concern over the impacts of automobile owners seeking recreational...