Books

A collection of essays addressing the collaboration of human and natural forces in the creation of cities, the countryside, and empires.

New Natures broadens the dialogue between the disciplines of science and technology studies (STS) and environmental history in hopes of deepening and even transforming understandings of human-nature interactions. The volume presents historical studies that engage with key STS theories, offering models for how these theories can help crystallize central lessons from empirical histories, facilitate comparative analysis, and provide a language for complicated historical phenomena. Overall, the collection exemplifies the fruitfulness of cross-disciplinary thinking.

Michael Zeheter offers a probing case study of the environmental changes made to fight cholera in two markedly different British colonies: Madras in India and Quebec City in Canada. He examines the complex political and economic factors that came to bear on the reshaping of each colony’s environment and the urgency placed on disease control.

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.

This is the first history of phytotrons, huge climate-controlled laboratories that enabled plant scientists to experiment on the environmental causes of growth and development of living organisms. Made possible by computers and other modern technologies of the early Cold War, phytotrons promised an end to global hunger and political instability, spreading around the world to thirty countries after World War II.

Environmental alarmism has long been a political bellwether. Based on case studies from four continents and the North Atlantic, Exploring Apocalyptica argues for a reevaluation of familiar clichés. t shows that environmentalists were less apocalyptic than commonly thought, and other groups were far more enthusiastic.

An examination of the profound and rapid growth of Africa’s largest city during a pivotal era of national and global uncertainty.

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

A New Environmental History that Integrates Cultural and Urban Identity Across German Cities and Their Outskirts

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

The Story of Natural Gas’s Rise from Unwanted Byproduct to Essential Fuel Source

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

An Engaging History of the Less Glamorous but Equally Essential Aspects of Space Travel: Sanitation, Food Supply, and Waste Disposal

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

A Much-Needed Study ofInfrastructures and How Technologies of Modernity Enriched Scientific Knowledge