History of the Urban Environment

Lays Bare the Class Struggles Inherent in Public Health and Urban Parks Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century

A Wide-Ranging Environmental and Historical Study of the Evolution of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul Area

An Interdisciplinary and International Study of the Vast City Systems that Facilitate Modern Life

The First Environmental History of Krakow, Covering More than a Thousand Years of History

An Interdisciplinary Overview of New York City’s Relationship with Its Waterways and Coastlines Since 1889

The First Comprehensive Examination of Chicago’s Environmental History from Indigenous Peoples to Twenty-First Century Environmental Restoration

The only environmental history of Italy in the latter half of the twentieth century in English.

Motor City Green sheds light on the ways social and political history intersect with urban and environmental history as a new way to tell the history of Detroit.

American, Canadian, and British scholars probe the environmental history of London during the modern and contemporary period.

Philadelphia was one of America’s first major cities and an international seaport. Nature’s Entrepot views the planning, expansion, and sustainability of the urban environment of Philadelphia from its inception to the present.

Examines the Intersection of Energy Policy and Environmental Regulation after the 1973 OAPEC Oil Embargo

An original and in-depth history of the 1969 Santa Barbara, CA oil spill. Teresa Sabol Spezio provides a background of water pollution control, government oversight of federally funded projects, and chemical detection methods in place prior to the spill. She then shows how scientists and politicians used public outrage over the spill to implement wide-ranging changes to federal environmental and science policy, and demonstrates the advancements to offshore oil drilling, pollution technology, and water protection law that resulted from these actions.

The Standard Oil Company emerged out of obscurity in the 1860s to capture 90 percent of the petroleum refining industry in the United States during the Gilded Age. Economic success masked the dark side of efficiency as Standard Oil dumped oil waste into public waterways, filled the urban atmosphere with acrid smoke, and created a consumer safety crisis by selling kerosene below Congressional standards. Organized around the four classical elements at the core of Standard Oil’s success (earth, air, fire, and water), Refining Nature provides an ecological context for the rise of one of the most important corporations in American history.

Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discusses how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and discusses more recent strategies to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting.

A Negotiated Landscape examines the transformation of San Francisco’s iconic waterfront from the eve of its decline in 1950 to the turn of the millennium.