An essay collection exploring the history of 5,000-year relationship between human culture and nature on the Georgia coast.One of the unique features of the Georgia coast today is its thorough conservation. At first glance, it seems to be a place where nature reigns. But another distinctive feature of the coast is its deep and diverse human history. Indeed, few places that seem so natural hide so much human history. In Coastal Nature, Coastal Culture, edito...

**Winner of the 24th Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book PrizeFinalist for the 2023 Cundill History PrizeGold Medal Recipient, Nautilus Book Awards, SustainabilityThe dirty work essential to a clean energy transition**To achieve fossil fuel independence, few technologies are more important than batteries. Used for powering zero-emission vehicles, storing electricity from solar panels and wind turbines, and revitalizing the electric grid, batteries ar...

The destruction and defiance that swirled around Australia's embrace of the world's nuclear orderThough a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development. The continent was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. However, this...

The entangled human and more-than-human histories of one of the world’s iconic urban green spacesFrom deer and beavers to “free range” pigs and goats in and around Seneca Village, what we now know as Central Park has long been home to an abundance of animals. In 1858, the city adopted the Greensward Plan and began the long process of reshaping the 843 acres of land into a park where everything—from the trees to the trails to the inhabitants—would be meticulously pl...

How sun and sea air were prescribed as medicine on America's eastern coastFor centuries, the ocean was seen as a place of danger and work, but by the late nineteenth century, northeastern shores of the United States became therapeutic destinations for the sick and weary. Doctors in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities began prescribing time at the beach as a remedy for ailments such as tuberculosis, rickets, and exhaustion. In the decades that followed,...

**Honorable Mention, 2025 Richard Frisbie Award for Adult Nonfiction, sponsored by the Society of Midland AuthorsHonorable Mention, 2025 Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, sponsored by the Organization of American HistoriansA 2025** CHOICE **Outstanding Academic Title in Environmental StudiesHousewives, hard hats, and an Ohio town’s restoration of the radioactive wasteland in its backyard**In 1984, a uranium leak at Ohio’s outdated Fer...

Explores the photography of climate changePhotographs do not simply speak for themselves. Their meanings are built through interpretive frameworks that shift over time. Today, photographs of receding glaciers are one of the most well recognized visualizations of human-caused climate change. These images, captured through repeat photography, have become effective with an unambiguous message: global warming is happening, and it is happening now. But this wasn't alway...

**Winner of the 2025 Hagley Prize for the Best Book in Business History from the Business History Conference and the Hagley LibraryWinner of the 2025 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award from the International Studies AssociationAn infamous voyage explores the hazardous waste trade and environmental justice**In 1986 the Khian Sea, carrying thousands of tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia, began a two-year journey, roaming the world's oceans in search of a...

**Winner of the 2023 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize for best book in western environmental history from the Western History AssociationIndigenous power in a significant cultural and ecological borderland**In People of the Ecotone, Robert Morrissey weaves together a history of Native peoples with a history of an ecotone to tell a new story about the roots of the Fox Wars, among the most transformative and misunderstood events of early American history. To do this, he als...

**Winner of the Inaugural Book Prize from the Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History NetworkA compelling environmental history of a critical ecosystem under threat**In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and...

Conservation as a tool of colonialism in early twentieth-century KoreaJapanese 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 set out to restructure the rhythms and routines of agrarian life, targeting everything from home heating to food preparation. Timber industrialists,...

Introducing students to the place of population in environmental thinkingFor centuries, thinking about the earth's increasing human population has been tied to environmental ideas and political action. This highly teachable collection of contextualized primary sources allows students to follow European and North American discussions about intertwined and evolving concepts of population, resources, and the natural environment from early contexts in the sixteenth cen...