Environmental History

Brought to you by Penguin. In this paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Drawing on an...

 Humans versus Nature tells a history of the global environment from the Stone Age to the present, emphasizing the adversarial relationship between the human and natural worlds. Nature is cast as an active protagonist rather than a mere backdrop or victim of human malfeasance. Daniel R. Headrick shows how environmental changes - epidemics, climate shocks, and volcanic eruptions - have molded human societies and cultures, sometimes overwhelming them.  

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 apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.

Environmental Science For Dummies is a straightforward guide to the interrelationships of the natural world and the role that humans play in the environment. This book tracks to a typical introductory environmental science curriculum at the college level—and is great as a supplement or study guide for AP Environmental Science, too. If you're in need of extra help for a class, considering a career in environmental science, or simply care about our planet and want to learn more about helping the environment, this friendly Dummies resource is a great place to start.

The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans - the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia - before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress. 

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY PRIZE 2016 'Dazzling' Literary Review 'Brilliant' Sunday Express 'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist 'A superb biography' The Economist 'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday Alexander von...

This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies.

Humans have long transformed the planet, scratching its surface for stones and ores, planting and harvesting crops, sparking fires for light and heat. But since the dawn of industrialization and especially since 1950, our impact has accelerated sharply. Economic, technological, and demographic changes have driven rapid and ongoing shifts in patterns of pollution, human health, and rising sea level and temperatures.

In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America's known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent's evolutionary richness. Distinguished scholar Dan Flores's ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the "wild new world" of North America.

“Imagine The Leftovers, but with honey” (Elle), and in the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this “spectacular and deeply moving” (Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author) literary novel follows three generations of beekeepers from the past, present, and future, weaving a...

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in...

Authors Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World War II, a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and fear of humans' capacity for almost limitless destruction. It was at this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet-wide impact of people's behavior emerged, closely allied to anxieties for the future. With the rise of "the environment", the authors argue, came new expertise, making certain kinds of knowledge crucial to understanding the future of our planet.

From prehistory to the present-day conservation movement, Stephen Pyne explores the efforts of successive American cultures to master wildfire and to use it to shape the landscape. A timely environmental classic. Pyne was named by Science magazine as "the world's leading authority on the history of fire." The narrator of Fire in America, Jack de Golia, served as a firefighter with the National Park Service and then as a fire information officer for the NPS, Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service.

An evocative, lyrical debut memoir into the heart of our vanishing natural world, the solitary life of an eel fisherman and an urgent awakening of an environmental conscience. As a boy in Herefordshire, Richard Fleming watched the rural world begin to slip away, along with the traditional...

From the author of New York Times bestseller The New New Deal, a groundbreaking piece of reportage from the trenches of the next climate war: the fight to fix our food system. Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our...

An upcoming book to be published by Penguin Random House...

Perpetually covered in ice and snow, the mountainous Antarctic Peninsula stretches southward toward the South Pole where it merges with the largest and coldest mass of ice anywhere on the planet. Yet far from being an otherworldly "Pole Apart", the region has the most contested political history of any part of the Antarctic Continent. In Frozen Empires, Adrian Howkins argues that there has been a fundamental continuity in the ways in which imperial powers have used the environment to support their political claims in the Antarctic Peninsula region. 

The story of how America’s garden clubs became an unexpected force for social change—powered by a diverse cast of extraordinary women with big personalities, fabulous hats, and dirt under their fingernails who fought for suffrage, civil rights, environmental justice, and more. During World...

In Losing Eden award-winning historian Sara Dant debunks the myth of the American West as “Eden” and instead embraces a more realistic and complex understanding of a region that has been inhabited and altered by people for tens of thousands of years. In this lively narrative Dant discusses the key events and topics in the environmental history of the American West, from the Beringia migration, Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post–World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues.

A science book for the general reader that is informative enough to be a popular textbook and yet well-written enough to appeal to general readers. “Hazen and Trefil [are] unpretentious—good, down-to-earth, we-can-explain-anything science teachers, the kind you wish you had but never did...