New Books in Environmental Studies

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic account of art and US imperialism around the globe in the nineteenth century. In this work, art historian Dr. Cao crafts a nuanced portrait of nineteenth-century US painters’ complicity with and resistance to ascendant US imperialism, offering eye-opening readings of canonical works, landscapes of polar expeditions and tropical tourism, still lifes of imported goods, genre paintings, and ethnographic portraiture.Revealing how the US empire was “hidden in plain sight” in the art of this period, Dr. Cao examines artists including Frederic Edwin Church and Winslow Homer who championed and expressed ambivalence toward the colonial project. She also tackles the legacy of US imperialism, examining Euro-American painters of the past alongside global artists of the present. Pairing each chapter with reflections on works by contemporary anticolonial artists including Tavares Strachan, Nicholas Galanin, and Yuki Kihara, Dr. Cao addresses important contemporary questions around representation, colonialism, and indigeneity. This book foregrounds an underacknowledged topic in the study of nineteenth-century US art and illuminates the ongoing ecological and economic effects of the US empire.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Eco-anxiety. Climate guilt. Pre-traumatic stress disorder. Solastalgia. The study of environmental emotions and related mental health impacts is a rapidly growing field, but most researchers overlook a closely related concern: reproductive anxiety. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question (U California Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive study of how environmental emotions influence whether, when, and why people today decide to become parents—or not.Jade S. Sasser argues that we can and should continue to create the families we desire, but that doing so equitably will require deep commitments to social, reproductive, and climate justice. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question presents original research, drawing from in-depth interviews and national survey results that analyze the role of race in environmental emotions and the reproductive plans young people are making as a result. Sasser concludes that climate emotions and climate justice are inseparable, and that culturally appropriate mental and emotional health services are a necessary component to ensure climate justice for vulnerable communities.Books and Resources mentioned in today’s episode: Check out Conceivable Future here Check out Climate Mental Health Network here Check out Climate Psychology Alliance here Check out The Good Grief Network here  Find Parenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for Cultivating Resilience, Taking Action, and Practicing Hope in the Face of Climate Change by Elizabeth Bechard here Find Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety by Britt Wray here Find A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet by Sarah Jaquette Ray here Dr. Jade S. Sasser is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Gender & Sexuality Studies and Society, Environment, and Health Equity at the University of California, Riverside. Her research explores the relationships between reproductive justice, women’s health, and climate change. She is the author of two books, On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change (2018, NYU Press), which won the Emory Elliott Book Award, and Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future (2024, UC Press). Dr. Sasser has a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from University of California, Berkeley; an MA in Cultural Anthropology from UC Berkeley; and an MPH in Global Health from Boston University. Her podcast Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question can be found here.Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and is an editor at the New Books Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

“Almost every storyline we’re familiar with suggests that we should banish [darkness] as quickly as possible—because darkness is often presented as a void of doom rather than a force of nature that nourishes lives, including our own.”According to Dark Sky International, 99% of people in the US live under the influence of skyglow. With each artificial light we install, we grow more unfamiliar with darkness and its riches. But what if darkness, instead of being a source of danger and discomfort, could be the very place where life flourishes in unexpected ways?In Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark (Algonquin Books, 2024), Leigh Ann Henion invites us to discover the amazing creatures and species that exist within darkness, from fireflies and moths to salamanders and glowworms.Henion bravely explores the biodiversity of her home region of Appalachia, taking us to a synchronous firefly event in Tennessee, a bat outing in Alabama, and a moth festival in Ohio. In North Carolina, she finds forests alight with bioluminescent mushrooms, neighborhood trees full of screech owls, and valleys teeming with migratory salamanders. Along the way, Henion encounters naturalists, biologists, primitive-skills experts, and others who’ve dedicated their lives to cultivating relationships with darkness.In an age of increasing artificial light, Night Magic focuses on the profound beauty that still surrounds us after sunset.Leigh Ann Henion (author) is the New York Times bestselling author of Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark and Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World. Her work has appeared in Smithsonian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, and a variety of other publications. She is a former Alicia Patterson Fellow, and her work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Henion lives in Boone, North Carolina.Renee Hale (host) holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and works in R&D for the food and beverage industry. She is the author of The Nightstorm Files, a voracious reader, and enjoys sharing new discoveries with listeners and readers alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What acquired habits and conveniences allow us to turn a blind eye with an air of detachment? Using examples from the hottest places on earth, Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet (U California Press, 2024) shows how scientific methods of accounting for heat and modern forms of acclimatization have desensitized us to climate change.Ubiquitous air conditioning, shifts in urban planning, and changes in mobility have served as temporary remedies for escaping the heat in hotspots such as the twentieth-century Middle East. However, all of these measures have ultimately fueled not only greenhouse gas emissions but also a collective myopia regarding the impact of rising temperatures. IIdentifying the scientific, economic, and cultural forces that have numbed our responses, this book charts a way out of short-term thinking and towards meaningful action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns and regions frequently contend with destruction caused by earthquakes, floods, landslides and debris flows, and sea-level rise and coastal erosion. As Dr. Gary Griggs demonstrates in California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State (University of California Press, 2024), few years go by without a disaster of some kind, and residents often rebuild in the same locations that were just destroyed.Considering the current climate crisis and increasing environmental inequalities, the stakes are growing ever higher. This book dives into the history of the state’s vulnerability to natural hazards, why and where these events occur, and how Californians can better prepare going forward. A mix of photographs and maps both historical and contemporary orients readers within the state’s sprawling landscapes and provides glimpses of some of the geologic risks in each region. With the final chapter, Dr. Griggs issues a call to action and challenges readers to envision a safer, more equitable, and sustainable future.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Romans, Crusaders and Mamluks. Today it has become a tourist hotspot, but its drying basin is increasingly under threat.In this panoramic account, Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. Moving through the ages, Arielli reveals the religious, economic, military, and scientific importance of the lake, which has been both a source of great wealth and a site of war. The Dead Sea weaves together a tapestry of the lake’s human stories—and amidst environmental degradation and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Andrew Boyd is a humorist and long-time veteran of creative campaigns for social change. He led the decade-long satirical media campaign “Billionaires for Bush,” and is co-founder of both Agit-Pop Communications, an award-winning creative agency and the netroots powerhouse The Other 98%, which specializes in winning the battle of the ‘story’ through meme warfare with some of the Internet’s most viral original political content.For the last many years, he has been grappling with the issue of Climate Change, co-creating the Climate Ribbon grief-storytelling ritual and leading the Climate Clock project, which melds art, science, tech and grassroots organizingI Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor (New Society, 2023) is Andrew’s third. And it provides an intellectual journey through both essays & interviews, which at once shows Andrew’s passion and his quest to understand the paradoxes of the existential climate crisis.About the book: WITH GLOBAL WARMING projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.He searches out eight leading climate thinkers -- from collapse-psychologist Jamey Hecht to grassroots strategist adrienne maree brown, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, and Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer -- asking them: "Is it really the end of the world? and if so, now what?"With gallows humor and a broken heart, Boyd steers readers through their climate angst as he walks his own. From storm-battered coastlines to pipeline blockades and "hopelessness workshops," he maps out our existential options, and tackles some familiar dilemmas: "Should I bring kids into such a world?" "Can I lose hope when others can't afford to?" and "Why the fuck am I recycling?"He finds answers that will surprise, inspire, and maybe even make you laugh in this insightful and irreverent guide for achieving a "better catastrophe." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Yet behind these anxieties lies an older, much deeper fear about the power that climate exerts over us. The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2024) traces the history of this idea and its pervasive influence over how we interpret world events and make sense of the human condition, from the rise and fall of ancient civilizations to the afflictions of the modern psyche.Taking readers from the time of Hippocrates to the unfolding crisis of global warming today, David Livingstone reveals how climate has been critically implicated in the politics of imperial control and race relations; been used to explain industrial development, market performance, and economic breakdown; and served as a bellwether for national character and cultural collapse. He examines how climate has been put forward as an explanation for warfare and civil conflict, and how it has been identified as a critical factor in bodily disorders and acute psychosis.A panoramic work of scholarship, The Empire of Climate maps the tangled histories of an idea that has haunted our collective imagination for centuries, shedding critical light on the notion that everything from the wealth of nations to the human mind itself is subject to climate’s imperial rule.This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool whose research focuses on human mobilities. She is a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Today I talked to Marcia Bjornerud about Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks (Flatiron Books, 2024).Rocks are the record of our creative planet reinventing itself for four billion years. Nothing is ever lost, just transformed. Marcia Bjornerud’s life as a geologist has coincided with an extraordinary period of discovery. From an insular girlhood in rural Wisconsin, she found her way to an unlikely career studying mountains in remote parts of the world. As one of few women in her field, she witnessed the shift in our understanding of the Earth, from solid object to an entity in a constant state of transformation. In the most tumultous times of her own life, a deep understanding of our rocky planet imbued her life with meaning. The lives of rocks are long and complex, spanning billions of years and yet shaping our own human lives in powerful, invisible ways. Sandstone that filters out pathogens creating underground oases in aquifers of clean water. Ecologite is “the chosen rock” whose formation keeps the planet running. Earth is not just a passive backdrop, or a source of resources to be mined, extracted, and carved out. Rocks are full of wisdom, but somewhere along the way many of us have forgotten how to hear it. When we are uncertain about where to find truth, a geocentric worldview reminds us that we are Earthlings, part of a planetary community where we can wisdom in the most unlikely places. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Part of what makes the challenges that collectively are called the “environmental crisis” so difficult is that the vocabulary we deploy in thinking and discussing the issues emerged under social conditions that are far removed from our present. The familiar idiom of nation states, borders, jurisdiction, and so on seems inadequate for addressing a crisis that concerns global conditions. It’s plausible to think that a cogent response to the environmental crisis will require a reconstruction of the conceptual tools of social and political theory.In his new book, Ecosovereignty: A Political Principle for the Environmental Crisis (Routledge 2024), Omar Dahbour develops new understandings of the concepts of sovereignty, territory, peoplehood, and self-determination, all with a view toward building a case for the principle according to which peoples have a right to protect and maintain their natural environments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies