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A narration of the mutually mortal historical contest between humans and nature in Latin America. Covering a period that begins with Amerindian civilizations and concludes in the region's present urban agglomerations, the work offers an original synthesis of the current scholarship on Latin America's environmental history and argues that tropical nature played a central role in shaping the region's historical development. Human attitudes, populations, and appetites, from Aztec cannibalism to more contemporary forms of conspicuous consumption, figure prominently in the story. However, characters such as hookworms, whales, hurricanes, bananas, dirt, butterflies, guano, and fungi make more than cameo appearances. Recent scholarship has overturned many of our egocentric assumptions about humanity's role in history. Seeing Latin America's environmental past from the perspective of many centuries illustrates that human civilizations, ancient and modern, have been simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable than previously thought

How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons', agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself

Feller reviews FORESTS OF ASH: An Environmental History by Tom Griffiths.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 The Environmental Historiography of Britain -- Chapter 2 The Highlands and the Roots of Green Consciousness, 1750-1990 -- Chapter 3 Exploiting Scottish Semi-Natural Woods, 1600-1850 -- Chapter 4 The Pinewoods and Human Use, 1600-1900 -- Chapter 5 The Atlantic Oakwoods as a Commercial Crop in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries -- Chapter 6 Bogs and People in Scotland Since 1600 -- Chapter 7 Energy Rich, Energy Poor: Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, 1600-1800 -- Chapter 8 The Improvers and the Scottish Environment: Soils, Bogs and Woods -- Chapter 9 Trees as Historic Landscapes: from Wallace's Oak to Reforesting Scotland -- Chapter 10 The Alien Species in Twentieth-Century Britain: Inventing a New Vermin -- Chapter 11 Modern Agriculture and the Decline of British Biodiversity -- Chapter 12 History, Nature and Culture in British Nature Conservation -- Chapter 13 Environmental Consciousness -- Select Bibliography -- Index

"The environmental histories of the Arctic and Antarctica are characterised by contrast and contradiction. These are places that have witnessed some of the worst environmental degradation in recent history. But they are also the locations of some of the most farsighted measures of environmental protection. They are places where people have sought to conquer nature through exploration and economic development, but in many ways they remain wild and untamed. They are the coldest places on Earth, yet have come to occupy an important role in the science and politics of global warming. Despite being located at opposite ends of the planet and being significantly different in many ways, Adrian Howkins argues that the environmental histories of the Arctic and Antarctica share much in common and have often been closely connected. This book also argues that the Polar Regions are strongly linked to the rest of the world, both through physical processes and through intellectual and political themes. As places of inherent contradiction, the Polar Regions have much to contribute to the way we think about environmental history and the environment more generally"--

"Rivers are central to our identity as New Zealanders. They shape our landscape, forming the fertile plains we live and farm on, and provide the water that is so critical to our lives and economy. Since Europeans first settled in New Zealand, rivers have been exploited for both personal and public gain. We have taken water from rivers, returning it laden with pollutants; we have harnessed them for irrigation and to generate electricity. After nearly two centuries of taking our rivers for granted, we are facing a crisis. New Zealand's Rivers: An environmental history tells the story of how we got to this point. It examines: the richly textured relationship between Māori and awa (rivers), how European settlers perceived and utilised rivers, the introduction of trout and salmon, and the role of acclimatisation societies as the earliest advocates for our rivers, the hydroelectricity schemes, which reached their peak in the 'Think Big' era, recreational boating, including the invention of the jet boat on our unique braided rivers, the environmental movement and protection of rivers, the impact of agriculture on rivers, the efforts of Māori to assert mana (authority) over their awa through Treaty claims and other means. New Zealand's Rivers is a must-read for all New Zealanders interested in the future of our environment and economy. Confronting the history of our complex - and often conflicted - relationship with rivers is critical to building a shared understanding of how to better manage this precious resource into the future"--Inside front cover

The Ottoman Empire was one of the greatest early modern world empires [...] This edited volume is the first collective effort to take an original look at the Ottomans through the lense of environmental history. In its wide-ranging essays, environmental perspectives illuminate diverse historical processes and events in the long history of the Ottoman Empire. [...]

Japan: a land plagued by volcanoes, earthquakes and typhoons, yet blessed with a climate suitable for all manner of agriculture and forestry, and positioned where ocean currents collide and bring an abundance of the ocean's resources to its people; a country which moved quickly from an agrarian pre-industrial society to become one of the world's great economic powerhouses in only a few decades, spoiling water, air and land in the process, bringing misery to many of its people; a country with expansionist desires, colonizing neighboring lands, leading to war, defeat, destruction and, for the first time in history, nuclear devastation and its aftermath; a land and its people which share a remarkable resilience and ability to evaluate and correct their mistakes and renew their trajectory towards a better future.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Hunter-Gatherings and Fisherfolk: 10,000 to 5000 BP -- Chapter 3. Shafts of Sunlight: Agriculturalists -- Chapter 4. Closed and Open Systems, AD 550 To AD 1700 -- Chapter 5. Building Jerusalem: The Eighteen Century -- Chapter 6. Industrial Growth: Material Empires, 1800-1914 -- Chapter 7. 'A Fit Country for Heroes', 1914-50 -- Chapter 8. A Post-industrial World, 1950 to the Present -- Chapter 9. Experience and Meaning -- Appendix 1. The Changing Environment From the Air -- Notes -- Biographies -- Glossary -- A Selected Bibliography -- Index