Loading...

PODCAST

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:

science natural sciences

All Episodes

55:36

Edward Cutler, "This Beautiful Country: How Italy's...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/09/01

InThis 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

en

46:59

Raf de Bont et al eds., "Globalizing Wildlife" (UNC...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/31

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

en

68:45

Prakash Kashwan, "Decolonizing Environmentalism:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/30

Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Decolonizing Environmentalism:Alternative Visions and Practices of EnvironmentalAction (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

en

45:25

Catherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/29

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

en

42:33

Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels, "Lessons...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/29

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

en

31:51

David Helvarg, "Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/26

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

en

56:44

Leda Elliott, "The Five Seasons Method: A Gentle Path...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/23

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,

en

54:54

Sandeep Vaheesan, "Democracy in Power: A History of...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/22

InDemocracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Sandeep Vaheesanrecounts 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 andtherural electric cooperative. Vaheesan does not hesitate to critique the successes and failures cropping upalong the way; rather, he

en

44:53

Beronda L. Montgomery, "When Trees Testify: Science,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/18

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 were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native

en

53:36

Karen M'Closkey and Keith VanDerSys eds., "Media...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/16

Media Matters in Landscape Architecture(Applied Research & Design, 2025)goesbehind the scenes to consider how media technologies that have emerged in recent decades are shaping the practices of artists, designers, engineers, and scientists. The media infrastructure of climate science and Earth remote sensing, coupled with the increased availability of spatial information and modeling software, provides the context for many of the chapters in that the media and methods employed are designed to

en

62:14

Sophie Chao, "Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/15

InLand of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger(Duke UP, 2025),Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize hunger in lowland West Papua, a place where industrial plantation expansion and settler-colonial violence are radically reconfiguring ecologies, socialities, and identities. Instead of seeing hunger as an individual, biophysical state defined purely in nutritional, quantitative, or human terms, Chao investigates how hunger traverses variably

en

66:22

Jarvis C. McInnis, "Afterlives of the Plantation:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/12

Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded byBooker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial education as a strategy forBlack self-determination. There―and in many other communities in the U.S. South, theCaribbean, and Central America―Black people repurposed and regenerated what hadbeen a place of enslavement into a site for imagining alternative futures.Jarvis C. McInnis charts a new account of Black modernity by centering

en

42:20

William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone,...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/11

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 remember our own college experiences, what springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities: cramped dorm rooms and musty library stacks, gothic towers and freshly mowed quads. The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood(Harvard University Press, 2026) puts such seemingly inconsequential details at the

en

30:50

Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/09

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, 90 percent of their lives indoors, with two-thirds of that time spent in their homes. Globally, the construction and maintenance of residential buildings account for a staggering portion of carbon emissions. In this timely and fascinating work, architect and urban-planning scholar Stefan Al deftly weaves together archaeology, engineering,

en

36:50

Margaret E. Farrar and Adam Kaul, "Becoming Utopia:...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/09

Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest(UNebraska Press, 2026) centers on the tiny community of Bishop Hill, Illinois, whose marketing materials call it “Utopia on the Prairie,” home to a radical communal religious sect that emigrated from Sweden in the 1840s. Through rich textual and ethnographic analyses, Dr. Margaret E. Farrar and Dr. Adam Kaul tell the story of what happens when a small, historically significant Midwestern community negotiates the

en

86:31

Giulio Boccaletti, "The Environmental Republic: Why...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/07

Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility. The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World (Princeton University Press, 2026) reclaims this idea as the path to sustaining our life together on a changing planet, reframing our relationship to the environment not as a constraint on liberty but as its republican foundation. Giulio Boccaletti

en

41:31

Sara Pappas, "Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/05

Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century(University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art historical narratives of Western art: the famous turning point for painting and sculpture usually emblematized by the works of Édouard Manet and then the Impressionists. Instead of the usual revaluation of this turning point, Sara Pappas argues for the importance of the failure to find a cohesive story for the art world in the period itself, a

en

39:42

Brent Elliott and Roger Bowdler, "The British...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/03

Roger Bowdler and Brent Elliott’s The British Cemetery: Architecture, Landscape, Sculpture, published by Historic England (2026), traces the history of the cemetery from the 17th century to the present day. The cemetery emerged as a new landscape form in the 19th century in Britain but had deep roots in earlier churchyard practices and in fashionable garden landscape design. Cemeteries very quickly became a locus for the monumental expression of loss, family identity and social standing. The

en

27:21

Adam Barsouk, "Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/08/01

Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026)reframes one of the most pressing medical challenges of our time: how to prevent cancer.In this timely and accessible book, physician and medical researcher Adam Barsouk, MD, presents a sweeping examination of cancer's true origins-biological, environmental, dietary, infectious, industrial, occupational, and behavioral-and makes a compelling case for why cancer prevention must become a central

en

48:24

Patrick Nunn, "Whispers from Celtic Seas: The True...

New Books in Environmental Studies ·

2026/07/26

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 Seas: The True Meanings of Ancient Stories from Northwest Europe (Reaktion Books, 2026) by Professor Patrick Nunn at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia revisits coastal traditions from the Celtic fringes of northwest Europe, showing how they preserve memories of dramatic environmental change—floods, land loss and shifting

en

448 results

Similar Podcasts

Beyond the Divide

Koala Moon

The SCP Experience

Dr. NoSleep Studios

John Michael Godier"s Event Horizon

John Michael Godier

La Science CQFD

France Culture

A Moment of Science

Indiana Public Media