Washington University Press Search Results Page

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...

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...

The Organic Profit

Rodale and the Making of Marketplace Environmentalism

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

From green-lifestyle mavens who endorse products on social media to natural health activists sponsored by organic food companies, the marketplace for advice about how to live life naturally is better stocked than ever. Where did...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...