New Books in Environmental Studies

Osad

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  Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse with Laurie Parsons (LSE Press, 2026) 26.09.2026 35min

  Climate action is at an impasse. Its political opponents are stronger than ever, its advocates powerless. Almost every major government and corporation expresses their commitment to tackling climate change, yet decades of discussion, governance, and action have failed to stop carbon emissions advancing to record annual levels. How has so little been achieved for so long on such an urgent issue? In Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse (LSE Press, 2026), Laurie Parsons shows how the architecture of environmental thinking has been locked into ineffective pathways. We don’t need to be coerced into inaction on climate, because our understanding is constrained by metaphors, rhetoric and assumptions so embedded we have long since ceased to see them. To confront this, Climate Hegemony brings us a human’s-eye view of the climate crisis, building up from lived experience to reveal the interests and politics that underpin the impasse. Drawing on almost two decades’ research at the frontline of global development in Cambodia, Parsons reveals the chasm between how climate change appears in a newspaper, or a policy bulletin, and how it appears to those immersed in the places it affects. From this perspective, the limitations of current environmental thinking become clear, but so too do a great many alternatives. In this powerfully argued work, Parsons set out how, if we were to rethink the perspective from which we understand climate change, we can build knowledge from and for marginalised communities, from the ground upwards, challenging the impasse and creating new pathways to address and adapt to the social impacts of climate breakdown.
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  Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities with yasser elhariry and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (U Virginia Press, 2026) 26.09.2026 46min

  Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical approaches. From the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, this rich collection is inhabited by migrants, port cities, and coral reefs. It explores the fruitful potential of water for literary, anthropological, and ethical studies, bringing both cohesive transdisciplinarity and fresh comparative perspectives to hydro-criticism. Taken together, the wide range of critical interpretative practices constitutes a signal contribution to the blue humanities. Guest yasser elhariry is Associate Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of French & Italian Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literature, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of This Book Is Full of Holes: Literary Bodies & the Invention of an Idiom and Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric. He has published dozens of essays on Arabic and French lyric, translation, and postcolonialism. Along with Water Logics, he is coeditor most recently of Literature as Sound Studies, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean, Abdelkébir Khatibi: Literature & Theory, and The Postlingual Turn. Guest Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is Associate Professor of French at Tulane University where she also holds affiliations with the Environmental Studies Program and the Middle East and North African Studies program, which she founded in 2022. Talbayev recently joined the faculty advisory board for the newly established Tulane Global Humanities Center. She concurrently serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Francophone Research at the University of Leipzig. She is the long-time Editor of Expressions maghrébines and a co-editor of the “Passagen” book series at Georg Olms Verlag (Germany). Talbayev is the author of The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean with Fordham UP and the co-editor of several edited collections; in addition to Water Logics and Rethinking Hospitality in the Mediterranean (both with our other guest today) these include a roundtable entitled “Ecocritical Terrains: Rethinking Tamazghan and Middle Eastern Environments” published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2025. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press.
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  Damian White and Nicholas Pevzner, "Designing the Just Transition: Design-Politics, Labor, and the Battle for Post-Carbon Futures" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 20.09.2026 31min

  Environmental politics is clearly at an impasse, increasingly foreclosed by a fragmenting elite consensus on climate change, an escalating populist backlash on the right, and a pervasive sense of climate doom on the left. This book considers what new openings might be offered by a labor-centered transition focused on our creative agency and our collective capacities to design new worlds. Whilst political mobilizations and smart policy are vital for making progress on decarbonization, Designing the Just Transition: Design-Politics, Labor, and the Battle for Post-Carbon Futures (Bloomsbury, 2026) suggests that a more environmentally and socially just future will also have to be materialized and built, coded and created, imagined, desired, and enacted by many hands, many skills and many forms of visible and invisible design labor. The mainstream design industry is not to be trusted. Nevertheless, this book brings political ecology and environmental-labor studies into dialogue with critical design praxis, activism, and scholarship. It critically appraises traditions of worker-centered design, ecological and regional planning, sustainable and climate-smart architecture, and 'design when everyone designs.' Rather than embracing a scolding green politics of limits or techno-utopian propaganda, Designing the Just Transition points to a wealth of resources for thinking about how we still might engage in democratic world-making on a warmer, more restless, and more turbulent planet.
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  Conor Harrison, "Brokers of Power: The Financialization of the US Electricity System" (U Minnesota Press, 2026) 19.09.2026 37min

  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 becomes more urgent, financial actors maintain a complicating influence on the trajectory of energy transition. Brokers of Power: The Financialization of the US Electricity System (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) identifies changing patterns of investment intertwined with the shift from state-regulated electricity monopolies to a market-driven price model and the embrace of wind and solar hookups to the grid. Drawing from case studies such as catastrophic Winter Storm Uri that hit Texas in 2021 and in-depth interviews with people working in the electricity and financial sectors, Dr. Conor Harrison reveals how the various entanglements of private equity, investment banking, and financial modeling are shaping the future and raising the costs of this vital infrastructure. Today’s financial firms, he shows, are engaged in the electricity industry beyond matters of investment: they own electricity generation infrastructure, trade electricity on markets, capture federal renewable energy tax credits, and advise on electricity firm operating strategy. Looking beyond technology and policy, Dr. Harrison interrogates what it means to have powerful financial institutions as the primary agents of change in the fraught and ongoing energy transition. A timely and invaluable contribution to the fields of geography, environmental studies, and the energy social sciences, Brokers of Power is a cautionary account delving into the complexities surrounding the push for decarbonization. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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  Jared D Aldern and Theresa Lynn Gregor, "Landkeeping: Restoring Indigenous Fire Stewardship and Ecological Partnerships" (OSU Press, 2026) 19.09.2026 46min

  With rising temperatures, longer summers, drought, and more wildfires occurring in the United States and Canada, there is growing interest in the impact and efficacy of Indigenous fire and cultural burning practices. Indigenous communities throughout this region known as Turtle Island have long used fire to manage their homelands. An interdisciplinary anthology that includes extensive Native views, Landkeeping: Restoring Indigenous Fire Stewardship and Ecological Partnerships (OSU Press, 2026) provides engaging perspectives on the role of Indigenous fire and its importance to our ecological health, cultural continuity, and land-based kinship. Indigenous-identified and non-Indigenous allies and researchers in ecology, natural resource management, forestry, ethnobotany, and Native American/Indigenous Studies demonstrate how Indigenous knowledge offers sustainable, relational approaches to land care and resilience. Each chapter builds on the idea that fire stewardship is a manifestation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)—a system of knowledge that is rooted in place, transmitted through oral traditions and embodied practices, and guided by values such as reciprocity, responsibility, and interdependence with more-than-humans. By recognizing that fire is part of a larger cosmology, Landkeeping contributors share how fire stewardship is a path toward ecological balance, cultural revitalization, and just climate futures.
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  Billy Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions" (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026) 12.09.2026 1t 23min

  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 that world? In Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026), Billy Fleming and a wide set of contributors critically engage with the above questions and more. Around the globe, people are transforming their social, ecological, and economic systems in response to the climate crisis. This book guides readers through 29 of these exemplary works, which span 43 nations and 6 continents. From Cuba to Kiribati, Iceland to the Andes, the prairies of North America to the expanding Gobi Desert, these case studies foreground the tactics and modes of practice being employed, often by marginalized peoples, to create more humane, hospitable places. With dispatches from more than a dozen leading scholars working on the front lines of the climate justice movement, Building Postcarbon Futures is both a celebration of action underway and a clarion call to the planners, designers, policymakers, and activists who are pushing this planet toward a future of collective flourishing. Billy Fleming is a leading voice on the role of design in responding to the climate crisis in our cities, communities, and landscapes. He is founding codirector of the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank focused on climate and political economy, and assistant professor of landscape architecture at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo. He is an urbanist and housing policy researcher at the Climate and Community Institute. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026) 11.09.2026 36min

  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 live? His answer In this succinct and eminently readable survey­­­––almost everywhere and nowhere. He begins by showing homo sapiens and their hominid predecessors on the move, spreading across the globe looking for something to eat and a place to sit down. But only in the past ten thousand years after they learned to domesticate animals, cultivate the soil and store grain, could human beings abandon their migratory ways and settle into what we call villages, towns and cities. The author celebrates the ingenuity which made such settlements possible–– the humble brick of mud and straw, sewer and water systems and in the end, electricity and the engines that allow us to live in towers, suburbia or the great beyond. And thanks to powerful heating and cooling systems we can live comfortably (if we have the money) just about anywhere. But Professor Al also points out that “permanent settlement,” ancient or modern, has often so degraded the necessary resources of field and forest and life-sustaining water and air, that even the comfortably settled sometimes have been forced to move to higher, better or safer ground. In truth, wherever you live, you are likely to some degree degrading the environment. But Professor Al, neither a scold nor doomsayer, concludes that if we attend to the useful lessons of past building practices and town planning while drawing on new technology, we should be able to muddle through–– constructing sustainable communities and places where we may live permanently–– more or less! This episode is hosted by James Wunsch Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026) 06.09.2026 38min

  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, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet (MIT Press, 2026), Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU with her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too. Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made. Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That’s the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Stuart McHardy, "Scotland's Geomythography: Myth, Landscape and the Roots of Culture" (Luath Press, 2025) 06.09.2026 42min

  What can we learn from our landscape? How can Geomythography help us understand our cultural heritage? What is Geomythography? Geomythography is the interpretation of prehistoric and later societies at specific locales through a combination of oral tradition, place-names, landscape analysis and archaeology. The process is a means of finding new perspectives and interpretations to further the understanding of early and extant cultures, the continuities between them and investigating oral traditions that initially arose in pre-Christian myth, much of it concerning a Mother Goddess. In Scotland's Geomythography (Luath Press, 2025), Stuart McHardy unveils the intricate ties between Scotland’s landscapes and the rich tapestry of its pre-Christian and later traditions. Geomythography is a vital lens through which to understand the enduring relationship between the land and its people. The book invites readers to discover how communities have thrived within the land of Scotland, fostering a deep-rooted cultural connection. McHardy argues that respect for our ancestors and the knowledge they imparted shape not only individual identity but also communal responsibility towards future generations. This book is an essential read for history enthusiasts, those interested in myth and folklore and anyone interested in finding out more about Scotland’s Geomythography. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Robert Shum, "Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) 05.09.2026 26min

  Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy?: Climate and Energy Politics between Crisis and Decarbonization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? Despite landmark agreements and expanding knowledge, emissions have fallen unevenly and progress has repeatedly stalled or reversed. Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy? explains that failure by focusing on domestic politics: how institutions distribute power, how interest groups exploit “access points,” and why countries with similar wealth and technology diverge. Moving beyond arguments about mere political will, it situates energy and climate outcomes within the institutional architectures of industrialized oil super-producers: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Shum advances a neopluralist theory of climate politics, arguing that policy is shaped by the strategic capture of institutional venues by carbon-intensive interests. He shows how separation of powers, federalism, party systems, and electoral rules configure opportunities for a de facto carbon oligarchy. By mapping where binding decisions are made and who can reach them, the book offers a generalizable framework for diagnosing blockages, explaining cross-national variation, and identifying leverage points for sustaining ambitious climate policy over time. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025) 04.09.2026 54min

  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 frontier, Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier (University of Arizona Press, 2025) invites us to recognize the centrality of the human condition in the face of an increasingly uncertain world and imagine future forms of coexistence. Reflecting on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with smallholding settlers, Indigenous Mapuche farmers, environmental activists, entrepreneurs, and conservation scientists, Piergiorgio Di Giminiani brings to light how these diverse groups navigate the enduring impacts of settler-caused environmental depletion and their aspirations for new ethics of care. Di Giminiani challenges traditional Western humanism, proposing a more relational and open-ended understanding of humanity shaped by interactions with nonhuman others. Rather than seeking fixed answers, the book explores the fluid and multifaceted nature of becoming human through the lens of conservation politics. By highlighting the entangled, multispecies worlds of southern Chile, Di Giminiani offers a novel approach to understanding the political project of becoming human in the Anthropocene. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on land, indigeneity, conservation, agriculture, and statecraft, with ethnographic fieldwork experience in both Chile and Italy. He is the author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile (2018) and Alterhumanism (2025). He has also co-edited several volumes, including The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging (2026), with Hélène Risør and Karine Vanthuyne, which was featured on the New Books Network; Theorizing Relations in Indigenous South America (2022), with Marcelo González and Giovanna Bacchiddu; and Ecopolíticas globales: medioambiente, bienestar y poder (2016), with Ángel Aedo and Juan Loera. Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Sarah M. Rios, "Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice" (Temple UP, 2026) 02.09.2026 23min

  Diseases Have No Eyes: Valley Fever and Environmental Health Justice (Temple University Press, 2026) investigates how communities in Central Valley, California deal with Valley Fever, a painful illness caused by a soil fungus. The airborne disease’s symptoms can last from two months to a patient’s lifetime and may be fatal. Nearly a third of the national cases are reported in California, where those infected are disproportionately farmworkers and people incarcerated in the region. Poverty, pollution, and prison expose these groups to cumulative environmental and health risks that deny Valley Fever patients adequate medical treatment. Dr. Sarah M. Rios examines how these populations face racial health disparities and develop strategies of care. She connects environmental justice activists as well as prison advocates and abolitionists who mobilize protests and issue calls to action to the past and ongoing efforts for medical autonomy and healthy communities. Diseases Have No Eyes emphasizes that vulnerable groups have developed an expertise and understanding of Valley Fever out of necessity. In the process, these community members offer an alternative public health response that extends beyond the individual body. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Edward Cutler, "This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation" (Chelsea Green, 2026) 01.09.2026 50min

  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 shaped its present—and its future, with this riveting look at the incredibly diverse natural history and our need to preserve it. Italy is renowned for its antiquity, classical literature, philosophy, and modern-day culture, cuisine and fashion, but what has gone largely overlooked – and undocumented, even by its people – is its uniquely biodiverse landscape and wildlife. Italy has over 58,000 different species of wildlife, of which 4,777 are endemic, the highest in Europe. Italy provides a home for a third of all European flora and fauna, with a vast range of fruit and vegetable varieties: more grape varieties than France, more wheat than the US and more olives than Spain.  Edward Cutler, an art historian by trade, began to explore this history when, four years ago on his small Tuscan farm, he found a salamander that turned out to be endemic to that specific location. In understanding how Italy came together as a country, one of the youngest and still geologically active landscapes in the world, and made up of mountains, volcanoes, earthquakes, glacial lakes, desert islands, caves and forests, Ed realised that this natural history has also had an incredibly important influence on its human history, especially its food culture and low-impact agriculture. And along the way, Ed discovers that Italy once was home to pygmy elephants, giant killer hedgehogs, and vampire-toothed deer. Today we can see the relics of those ancient creatures in the flashy blue lizard of Capri, gladiator crabs under the forum in Rome, the crested porcupine, the beautiful Apennine chamois and of course the Marzipan brown bear and Italian grey wolf, not forgetting its flora, including the world’s rarest Christmas tree in Sicily. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Raf de Bont et al eds., "Globalizing Wildlife" (UNC Press, 2026) 31.08.2026 45min

  Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the latest in a long line of forces affecting human-animal relations. Grey parrots travelled the world as pets; rats used global shipping infrastructure to spread to far-off islands and became the object of cross-border extermination campaigns; and California sea otters were relocated to accommodate global oil transportation needs. The language of globalization, however, is rarely used to understand the history of these creatures. Globalizing Wildlife (UNC Press, 2026) shows how wild animals were not simply affected by globalization but shaped its concrete trajectories at local, national, and international scales. The editors and contributors of this collection bring the more-than-human turn to globalization studies, foregrounding not only how globalization matters for wildlife but also how wildlife matters for and constitutes globalization. The volume presents a range of geographically- and species-diverse case studies spanning from the 1870s to the present day to show that globalizing wildlife is far from a homogenous process. Ultimately, contributors reconceptualize globalization and wildlife in relation to one another and foster new connections between the longstanding study of globalization and the dynamic, rapidly consolidating field of historical animal studies. Contributors are Vincent Bijman, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Regina Horta Duarte, George Iordachescu, Nancy J. Jacobs, Ajit Menon, Gregg Mitman, Nitin D. Rai, Simone Schleper, Jules Skotnes-Brown, Monica Vasile, and James L. A. Webb Jr. Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he’s currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Prakash Kashwan, "Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 30.08.2026 1t 9min

  Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action (Bloomsbury, 2024) helps us reimagine our approach to environmental stewardship critically interrogating the problems associated with existing legacies of environmentalism and how we imagine other ways to addressing the multiple planetary crises. The authors cast a critical eye on wealthy and influential environmental groups that committed to anti-racist strategies in the wake of the racial awakening of 2020. Yet, they continue to embrace false solutions like carbon markets and biodiversity offsets, which carry deeply racialized consequences. By tracing the roots of these misplaced priorities to detrimental modernity steeped in colonialism and capitalism, the authors call for transformational changes in human-nature relationships. They distill lessons from the divestment movement, which has questioned the fossil fuel industry's moral standing, and food sovereignty activists, who have mobilized global civil society to hold agribusiness corporations accountable. In these extraordinary times, Decolonizing Environmentalism invites readers to embark on a transformative journey to embrace anti-racist, emancipatory, and regenerative approaches to environmentalism. Prakash Kashwan is an educator, author, and scholar, whose work cuts across the fields of climate governance, environmental and climate justice, and international affairs. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He also holds faculty affiliations with the Heller School of Social Policy & Management, and Politics Department at Brandeis. Before moving to Brandeis, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and Co-directed the Economic and Social Rights Research Program at UConn's Human Rights Institute. Pauline Heinrichs is a Lecturer in War Studies (Climate and Energy) at King’s College London. Her research focuses on global environmental politics with a particular focus on climate and energy security, climate justice grievances, international orders and questions concerning security and existential risks in a warming world. She co-directs the Centre for Integrated Research in Risk and Resilience (CIRRR) and the Environmental Security Research Group. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels, "Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law" (NYU Press, 2026) 29.08.2026 45min

  The relationship between humans and the environment in the United States reflects tales of countless contrasting and overlapping trends, movements, and tensions. Law has cultivated both the planet’s biggest environmental threats and its most creative innovations for protecting human and ecological health. U.S. laws have driven both exploitation and temperance; destruction and restoration; and resistance and adaptation. Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law (NYU Press, 2026) showcases the fundamental role the law has served in reckoning with environmental harm in the United States. Authors Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels explore the full arc of U.S. environmental legal history across five major periods in the United States, reaching as far back as North America’s colonization and ending with the present. Through this rich history, the book considers the ways leadership, social movements, political coalitions, information, and technologies have both been catalyzed by the law and have advanced environmental change.Camacho and Daniels provide a fascinating and insightful history of environmental law. They ask readers to consider: What lessons can we draw from environmental legal history for contemporary challenges like climate change, AI, and emerging biotechnologies? In looking to the past, Lessons for a Warming Planet illustrates how prior generations each used legal imagination to navigate seemingly insurmountable environmental threats. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Catherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong" (Cornell UP, 2026) 29.08.2026 41min

  Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Dr. Catherine S. Chan follows the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list of undesirables fabricated in the so-called golden era of reforms following the social disturbances of the 1960s. Dr. Chan reveals a fragmented civilizing project that constructed dogs as dangerous, filthy, and unnecessary nuisances in a burgeoning city, rationalizing the slaughter of tens of thousands of dogs alongside paradoxical criticism of the native population for perpetrating animal cruelty and the promotion of British animal humanitarianism. Departing from anthropocentric perspectives in understanding the use of Britishness in the molding of modern cities, Savage restores the presence and agency of dogs to encourage a rethinking of the patchiness of British colonial governance and the long-lasting repercussions that modernity can have on our relationship with animals. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  David Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp" (Princeton UP, 2026) 26.08.2026 29min

  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 sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one of Earth’s most wondrous and underappreciated marine habitats. It’s an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars, crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens? For readers who know kelp only as tangles on the ocean surface or smelly mounds of seaweed littering beaches, Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp (Princeton University Press, 2026) reveals a thriving three-dimensional underwater world of color and beauty whose loss if allowed to happen will reverberate in unimaginable ways for both nature and humans. David Helvarg, a veteran journalist and accomplished scuba diver, takes us on a memorable journey beneath the waves through kelp’s natural and human history, the billions of dollars of products and services it contributes to our global economy, the unwitting human activities that threaten its survival, and the hopeful movements around the world to restore kelp habitat. Helvarg introduces us to Indigenous leaders promoting sea otter reintroduction, out-of-work urchin fisherman, documentary filmmakers, and ocean scientists all working in an unlikely collaboration to restore and protect kelp forests while promoting a growing range of uses for food, medicine, and energy. Forest of the Sea is the first book to document what is at stake if we lose these irreplaceable marine jewels, helping readers to understand how these natural systems might adapt and survive. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Leda Elliott, "The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance" (Scribner, 2026) 23.08.2026 51min

  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, which links nature’s cycles to our emotional, physical, and spiritual selves, there are five seasons: spring, summer, late summer, fall, and winter. You can feel the energy of that fifth season when the air gets cooler, the light turns golden, and we enjoy a few weeks of transition from the active energy of spring and summer to the calming, restorative energy of fall and winter. Leda Elliott grew up in Japan and has long been a student of the dialogue between East and West, between body and spirit. Drawing from decades of experience in holistic practices, Leda has developed a unique method for embracing the lessons we can learn from each season—late summer brings grounding, fall brings release, winter brings stillness, spring brings vision, and summer brings joy. Incorporating rituals, meditations, and exercises attuned to each season’s energy can help us feel more aligned. Things like the foods we eat, the colors we wear, and where we focus our attention can all deepen our sense of connection to ourselves and the world. Leda’s peaceful spirit radiates onto the page in a book offering tips and exercises, personal stories, illustrations, and testimonials from her students. These heartfelt narratives demonstrate how ancient practices can meet the challenges of modern life, providing support for those navigating grief, stress, and fatigue. The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path toward Emotional and Spiritual Balance (Scribner, 2026) will help readers of all ages and abilities get their energy back into balance, one breath and one season at a time. Leda Elliott is a Tai Chi Master, Reiki Master, and the creator of The Five Seasons Method, a wellness program that integrates Tai Chi, QiGong, breathwork, and seasonal energy principles to help individuals cultivate balance, vitality, and inner harmony. She trained under legendary Tai Chi Grandmaster Bow Sim Mark and is the owner of A Thousand Cranes Studio, where she offers in-person classes, private coaching, Reiki healing, and global online workshops. For more information please visit this website. Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist and certified mindfulness meditation teacher in Norwood, MA. You can find her on Youtube or visit her website. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
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  Sandeep Vaheesan, "Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 22.08.2026 50min

  In Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Sandeep Vaheesan recounts the rather overlooked story of how electricity spread across the U.S. economy during the 20th century. This book sheds careful light on the varied institutions and interests mediating the process, including investor-owned utilities and the rural electric cooperative. Vaheesan does not hesitate to critique the successes and failures cropping up along the way; rather, he lays them all bare in service of paving an actionable path toward the decarbonization and democratization of power. Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads their legal research and advocacy, including the amicus program. He has written and spoken widely on antimonopoly law and policy and building a fair economy. Previously, he worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and American Antitrust Institute. Anna Olteanu is a senior in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University, where she focuses on intellectual history. Her interests include political ecology, the history of economic thought, and literary criticism. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies