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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:

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61:14

Miles Kenney-Lazar, "Socializing Land: Plantations,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/03/04

Since 2008, there has been tremendous public interest in the social and ecological ramifications of the global land rush, a rapid increase of capital investment into land, especially for the establishment of agricultural and tree plantations. In Laos, the government has granted five percent of the national territory to investors as long-term land concessions since the early 2000s. Land investments, globally and in Laos, have violently and unjustly dispossessed peasants and Indigenous peoples of

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69:10

Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/03/01

Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy. Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool's strategic value in wartime, a position it gained over centuries, and contrived shortages of same in the 20th century, have helped drive consumers' transition to the synthetic fibers that have enabled fast fashion, and as both fiber and cloth are global contemporary pollutants.Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool

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38:37

Aidan Seale-Feldman, "The Work of Disaster: Crisis...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/23

The Work of Disaster: Crisis and Care Along a Himalayan Fault Line (U Chicago Press, 2025) is a compelling portrait of post-disaster imaginaries of repair in Nepal. In a world of cascading disasters, what are the consequences of transient care? In 2015, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and equally powerful aftershock struck the central region of Nepal. The disaster claimed over 9,000 lives and inspired a surge of humanitarian concern for the mental health of Nepali people. In The Work of Disaster, based

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51:41

Jason Cons, "Delta Futures: Time, Territory, and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/23

A free e-book version of Delta Futures is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.Delta Futures: Time, Territory, and Capture on a Climate Frontier (U California Press, 2025) explores the competing visions of the future that are crowding into the Bengal Delta’s imperiled present and vying for control of its ecologically vulnerable terrain. In Bangladesh's southwest, development programs that imagine the delta as a

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76:00

Josh Milburn, "Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/21

How would we eat if animals had rights? A standard assumption is that our food systems would be plant-based. But maybe we should reject this assumption. Indeed, this book argues that a future non-vegan food system would be permissible on an animal rights view. It might even be desirable.In Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully (Oxford University Press, 2023), Josh Milburn questions if the vegan food system risks cutting off many people's pursuit of the 'good life', risks

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66:59

Wendy Wolford, "The Plantation Ideal: Landscapes of...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/21

Plantations have been the privileged tool of colonial rule and extraction in Mozambique for more than one hundred years despite never having delivered sustained economic or social benefits. Drawing on extensive archival and qualitative contemporary research, The Plantation Ideal: Landscapes of Extraction in Mozambique (U California Press, 2025) by Dr. Wendy Wolford offers new insights into plantation economies, histories, and landscapes. Dr. Wolford tells the story of how the largely failed pursuit

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63:10

Eray Çayli, "Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/20

Extractivism—exploiting the earth for resources—has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world where ecological and humanitarian sensibilities are unprecedentedly widespread? Eray Çaylı argues it does so by mobilizing these sensibilities in new ways. Extractivism is no longer only about moving the earth—displacing peoples, fossils, minerals, and waters—but also leaving those who witness this violent displacement sentimentally moved. Earthmoving:

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58:22

Thomas Zeitzoff, "No Option But Sabotage: The Radical...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/19

An authoritative history of the radical environmental movement in the United States, No Option But Sabotage explores how far activists are willing to go to defend the planet in the face of repression and the escalating climate crisis.After 9/11, the radical environmental movement was considered the number one domestic terror threat by the U.S. government. But by the end of the decade the movement had largely gone silent. What happened? And given the threat from climate, why haven't more radical

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60:41

David Obst, "Saving Ourselves from Big Car" (Columbia...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/17

Streetwise: Saving Ourselves from Big Car (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025) exposes how “Big Car”―the complex of companies in the automobile, oil, insurance, media, and concrete industries that promote and entrench car dependence―has pursued profit at the expense of the common good. David Obst explores how Big Car gained almost immeasurable influence over our lives, weighing the benefits and the costs of reliance on private automobiles. He details how industry covered up the harms of lead

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62:15

Carl Death, "African Climate Futures" (Oxford UP, 2025)

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/16

This episode is brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group.African Climate Futures (Oxford UP, 2025) shows how climate-changed futures are imagined in Africa and by Africans, and how these future visions shape political debates and struggles in the present. Scientific climate scenarios forecast bleak futures, with increased droughts, floods, lethal heatwaves, sea level rises, declining crop yields, and greater exposure to vector-borne diseases. Yet, African climate

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49:40

Cassandra Shepard, "Settler Colonialism is the...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/15

Settler Colonialism is the Disaster: A Critique of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (U Illinois Press, 2026) is the new book from Dr. Cassandra Shepard, Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and Diaspora Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana. Published with University of Illinois Press, this encompassing and engrossing book focuses on the crises that have engulfed New Orleans, including the disasters of colonialism, Hurricane Katrina in

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65:45

Lys Kulamadayil, "Pathology of Plenty: Natural...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/13

In Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law (Bloomsbury 2025), Lys Kulamadayil offers a crucial examination of how international law shapes the exploitation of natural resources in post-colonial States. Kulamadayil reveals how international legal rules can be constitutive, punitive, remedial in creating the paradox of plenty in resource-rich States.The book revisits the making of foundational principles like sovereignty over natural resources and economic self-determination as

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54:21

Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/13

A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability. Consumers today are buying electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries motivated by the belief that they are doing good and decarbonizing society. But is sustainable lithium extraction possible? In Living Minerals, Javiera Barandiarán examines the history of lithium mining and uses during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the two

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54:30

Tom Bolton, "Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/11

The United Kingdom has sixteen nuclear power stations. Most go under the radar, but their presence is enormous, both physically and culturally. They divide opinion like nothing else. Are they relics of a past era, or a crucial part of our futures? Are they cathedrals of science or temples of doom?Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations (Strange Attractor, 2025) by Dr. Tom Bolton is a journey around Britain’s nuclear power stations and the country itself. From the Essex

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40:59

Nancy Castaldo, "Squirrel: How a Backyard Forager...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/09

Squirrels are a common sight, seemingly everywhere in wild and urban nature. Their chattering antics in city parks delight us while their raids on our backyard gardens and birdfeeders never fail to exasperate. But squirrels are more than amusing backyard entertainers, and few of us know much about them or fully appreciate their role in keeping the environment healthy. As stress on the natural world intensifies, should we be paying more attention to the plight of squirrels?In Squirrel: How a Backyard

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29:27

China’s Climate and Air Quality Governance and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/06

When it comes to the global challenges posed by climate change and environmental issues, China has been presented both as a source of problems and a provider of solutions. In this episode, we examine the current state of China’s climate and environmental policies with Dr. Hermann Aubié, whose research focuses on China’s climate and air quality governance and its policy relevance for EU-China relations. What is the on-the-ground reality of climate and air quality efforts in China at the moment, and

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64:34

Joseph Scalia III and Lynne S. Scalia, "Critical...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/05

Critical Consciousness: Beyond Impasses in Environmentalism, Psychoanalysis, and Education (Routledge, 2025) provides insight into the antagonism and disputative dialogue present in contemporary discourse.Taking a broad, pluralistic psychoanalytic perspective, the authors shed light on how and why ideology and conflict have infiltrated education, environmentalism, and psychoanalysis. This book unpacks forms of indoctrination and rejection of new ideas in environmentalism, considers the

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63:05

Jason Roberts, "We Stay the Same: Subsistence,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/02

An ethnography of indigenous lives amidst subsistence labor, large-scale logging, and unrealized schemes, We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and Enduring Hopes for Development in Papua New Guinea (U Arizona Press, 2024) traces how hopes for development in New Hanover, Papua New Guinea, are cultivated, frustrated, and yet continually renewed.On New Hanover Island in Papua New Guinea, Lavongai communities have long pursued transformative development through logging and large-scale agroforestry

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49:37

Allison Caine, "Restless Ecologies: Climate Change...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/02

In the high Andean grasslands 4,500 meters above sea level, Quechua alpaca herders live on the edges of glaciers that have retreated more rapidly in the past fifty years than at any point in the previous six millennia. Women are the primary herders, and their specialized knowledge and skill is vital to the ability of high-elevation communities to survive in changing climatic conditions. In the past decade, however, these herders and their animals have traversed a rapidly shifting terrain. Drawing

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44:58

Michael Hurley, "Waterways of Bangkok: Memory,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/02/01

Bangkok is one of the world’s great cities, and the central artery of that city is the Chaophraya River. Michael Hurley’s book, Waterways of Bangkok: Memory, Landscape, and Twilight (NUS Press, 2025) just published by National University of Singapore Press, is an evocative reflection on the river’s place in Thai history, society, and culture. The author describes the Chaophraya River as the “binding thread of the Thai heartland”. He uses the river to examine historical legacies, the role of diverse

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