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New Books in Environmental Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
New Books in Environmental StudiesStewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West with Stevie Ruiz (UNC Press, 2026)
The history of the environmental movement-from environmentalism of the nineteenth century to the environmental justice struggles of the late twentieth…
New Books in Environmental StudiesDisaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka with Vivian Y Choi (Duke UP, 2025)
In Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka (Duke UP, 2025), Vivian Y. Choi examines how the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami fostered new forms of…
New Books in Environmental StudiesRadioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan with Maxime Polleri (NYU Press, 2026)
The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the highest severity…
New Books in Environmental StudiesOffshore Oildom: America’s Energy Expansion into the Ocean with Tyler Priest (LSU Press, 2026)
Offshore Oildom: America’s Energy Expansion into the Ocean (LSU Press, 2026) tells the riveting story of the United States’ quest to secure the oil riches of…
New Books in Environmental StudiesWater, Carbon, Time: Exploring Peatlands in a Warming World with Jennifer de Mooy (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Water, Carbon, Time: Exploring Peatlands in a Warming World was published by University of Minnesota Press in 2026. Water, Carbon, Time is the story of…
New Books in Environmental StudiesThe Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World with Barry R Davis (JHU Press, 2026)
What drives someone to challenge the status quo to prevent disaster? In The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World…
New Books in Environmental StudiesGreen Thinking: Unlearning Outdated Ideas in Science, Economics and Politics with Natalie Bennett (Routledge, 2026)
Green Thinking: Unlearning Outdated Ideas in Science, Economics and Politics (Routledge, 2026) is about unlearning, discarding damaging, outdated ideas deeply…
New Books in Environmental StudiesA Healthy Union: How States Can Lead on Environmental Health with Susan Kaplan (Island Press, 2025)
In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state policies are the strongest tools available to create safe…
New Books in Environmental StudiesValuing Nature at the Ends of the World: Natural Capital and Climate Disaster in Belize with Patrick M. Gallagher (Columbia UP, 2026)
Belize is often described as a “pristine” ecotourism destination with a landscape that is “naturally” valuable. Yet for much of the twentieth century, British…
New Books in Environmental StudiesAll Around Is Fairy Ground: Pleasure and the Regency Garden with Timothy Mowl (Reaktion, 2026)
Regency gardens dazzled with colour, invention and theatricality: trellises heavy with roses and jasmine, shrubberies designed for intrigue and lawns enlivened…
New Books in Environmental StudiesCreatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species with Lee Raye (Reaktion, 2026)
Lee Raye joins Jana Byars to talk about their new book, Creatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species (Reaktion, 2026). Discover why a beaver was…
New Books in Environmental StudiesEcotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere with Nsah Mala, Richard Watts and Giulia Champion
Through a postcolonial lens, Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere (Liverpool, 2025) explores the various ways in which francophone writers, visual artists…
New Books in Environmental StudiesA Mellified Redemption? Learning to Live with a Pest Through Spotted Lanternfly Honey
Rosi Song of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective hosts authors Eve Z. Bratman and Anna Purchase in a discussion of their newly published research article on…
New Books in Environmental StudiesIndia, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South with Amit Ranjan and Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska (Routledge, 2026)
Can we expect leadership and responsibility from the Asian Global South in climate change governance? India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership…
New Books in Environmental StudiesThe Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire Across China, India, and Southeast Asia with Iftekhar Iqbal (Stanford UP, 2025)
Six great Asian river systems have their origins in the Tibetan glacial region: the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong, the Red and the…
New Books in Environmental StudiesThe Quake That Drained the Desert with Mary Elizabeth Reynolds (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
On May 3, 1887, an earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border. Forty-three people died in Bavispe, Mexico; sixty miles north in Arizona, buildings swayed…
New Books in Environmental StudiesDo We Really Need To Choose Between Jobs and the Environment?
Host Licia Cianetti talks to Lorenzo Feltrin about his recent book Workers and the World: Fighting Ecological Crisis from Within (Verso, 2016). They discuss…
New Books in Environmental StudiesClimate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse with Laurie Parsons (LSE Press, 2026)
Climate action is at an impasse. Its political opponents are stronger than ever, its advocates powerless. Almost every major government and corporation…
New Books in Environmental StudiesWater Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities with yasser elhariry and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (U Virginia Press, 2026)
Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place…
New Books in Environmental StudiesDamian White and Nicholas Pevzner, "Designing the Just Transition: Design-Politics, Labor, and the Battle for Post-Carbon Futures" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Environmental politics is clearly at an impasse, increasingly foreclosed by a fragmenting elite consensus on climate change, an escalating populist backlash on…
New Books in Environmental StudiesConor Harrison, "Brokers of Power: The Financialization of the US Electricity System" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
The twenty-first century has seen major transformations in the US electricity sector—but while the use of coal power wanes and the need for renewable energy…
New Books in Environmental StudiesJared D Aldern and Theresa Lynn Gregor, "Landkeeping: Restoring Indigenous Fire Stewardship and Ecological Partnerships" (OSU Press, 2026)
With rising temperatures, longer summers, drought, and more wildfires occurring in the United States and Canada, there is growing interest in the impact and…
New Books in Environmental StudiesBilly Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions" (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026)
What would a postcarbon future look like? What would it take to build and maintain a more just, regenerative world? How would it feel to live—and to thrive—in…
New Books in Environmental StudiesStefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)
In Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (Norton, 2026), the architect and urban planner Stefan Al asks–– where is a good place to…
New Books in Environmental StudiesLeah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)
They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate…
New Books in Environmental StudiesStuart McHardy, "Scotland's Geomythography: Myth, Landscape and the Roots of Culture" (Luath Press, 2025)
What can we learn from our landscape? How can Geomythography help us understand our cultural heritage? What is Geomythography? Geomythography is the…
New Books in Environmental StudiesRobert Shum, "Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has…
New Books in Environmental StudiesPiergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
In the Anthropocene, a question has become increasingly urgent: What does it mean to be human? Set against the backdrop of southern Chile’s conservation…
New Books in Environmental StudiesSarah M. Rios, "Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice" (Temple UP, 2026)
Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice (Temple University Press, 2026) investigates how communities in Central Valley, California…
New Books in Environmental StudiesEdward Cutler, "This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation" (Chelsea Green, 2026)
In This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation (Chelsea Green, 2026), discover Italy’s unique ecological past and how it has…
New Books in Environmental StudiesRaf de Bont et al eds., "Globalizing Wildlife" (UNC Press, 2026)
Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the…
New Books in Environmental StudiesPrakash Kashwan, "Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental…
New Books in Environmental StudiesAlejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels, "Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law" (NYU Press, 2026)
The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and…
New Books in Environmental StudiesCatherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes…
New Books in Environmental StudiesDavid Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In a matter of decades, a spectacular cold-water paradise thirty million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of…
New Books in Environmental StudiesLeda Elliott, "The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance" (Scribner, 2026)
A gentle yet powerful blend of ancient wisdom and modern wellness that shows how seasonal living can enrich your days. In the Chinese Five Element system…
New Books in Environmental StudiesSandeep Vaheesan, "Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Sandeep Vaheesan recounts the rather overlooked…
New Books in Environmental StudiesBeronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy" (Henry Holt & Co.)
The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees…
New Books in Environmental StudiesKaren M'Closkey and Keith VanDerSys eds., "Media Matters in Landscape Architecture" (Applied Research & Design, 2025)
Media Matters in Landscape Architecture (Applied Research & Design, 2025) goes behind the scenes to consider how media technologies that have emerged in recent…
New Books in Environmental StudiesSophie Chao, "Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke UP, 2025), Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize…
New Books in Environmental StudiesJarvis C. McInnis, "Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial education as…
New Books in Environmental StudiesWilliam Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood" (Harvard UP, 2026)
We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet when we…
New Books in Environmental StudiesMargaret E. Farrar and Adam Kaul, "Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest (U Nebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois…
New Books in Environmental StudiesStefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)
A sweeping history of humanity’s most fundamental creation―the home―and its effects on the land, cities, and people themselves. Americans spend, on average…
New Books in Environmental StudiesGiulio Boccaletti, "The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances individual liberty with…
New Books in Environmental StudiesSara Pappas, "Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century (University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art…
New Books in Environmental StudiesBrent Elliott and Roger Bowdler, "The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture" (Historic England, 2026)
Roger Bowdler and Brent Elliott’s The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture, published by Historic England (2026), traces the history of the…
New Books in Environmental StudiesAdam Barsouk, "Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention" (JHU Press, 2026)
Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026) reframes one of the most pressing medical challenges of…
New Books in Environmental StudiesPatrick Nunn, "Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True Meanings of Ancient Stories from Northwest Europe" (Reaktion, 2026)
What if the legends of submerged cities, land-making witches and sea-crossing bishops are not mere inventions but echoes of real events? Whispers from Celtic…
New Books in Environmental StudiesToby Miller and Joan Pedro Carañana, "Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They?" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the…
New Books in Environmental StudiesVictoria Donovan, "Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East" (Daunt Books, 2025)
Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (Daunt Books Publishing, 2025) is a unique reflection on the much-mythologised Donetsk and Luhansk…
New Books in Environmental StudiesAndrew Flachs, "Feeding the World as If People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed…
New Books in Environmental StudiesMaria Pinto, "Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival" (UNC Press, 2026)
In Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival (University of North…
New Books in Environmental StudiesTimothy Mitchell, "The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow" (Verso, 2026)
Stealing the future and concealing the theft—capitalism’s method, as examined by the author of the acclaimed Carbon Democracy Today, extraordinary wealth seems…
New Books in Environmental StudiesAngela Frederick, "Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster" (NYU Press, 2025)
A call to place disability at the center of climate and disaster responses Every disaster is a disability disaster, argues Angela Frederick. Disabled Power: A…
New Books in Environmental StudiesElana Resnick, "Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's excess: waste. Refusing…
New Books in Environmental StudiesGeorgia Holly et al, .eds., "Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond" (U Edinburgh Press, 2025)
Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond (U Edinburgh Press, 2025) outlines the need to embed Ocean…
New Books in Environmental StudiesGretchen Heefner, "Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Deserts, the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through the…
New Books in Environmental StudiesSpirituality, Science and Environmentalism in Taiwan
Who is Shennong, the Divine Farmer? And how can he help us understand the intricate relationships between spirituality, science and environmentalism in Taiwan…
New Books in Environmental StudiesMary E. Mendoza, "Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border" (UNC Press, 2026)
As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other environmental…