Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Road portrays a father and son struggling to survive in a post-apocalytic world turned savage.

Beginning in the pre-modern world, the Volga and Mississippi Rivers both served as critical trade routes connecting cultures in an extensive exchange network, while also sustaining populations through their surrounding wetlands and bottomlands. In modern times, “Mother Volga” and the “Father of Waters” became integral parts of national identity, contributing to a sense of Russian and American exceptionalism. Rivers, Memory, and Nation-Building discusses their histories, through which we derive a more nuanced view of human interaction with the environment, which adds another lens to our understanding of the past.

The essay focuses on the scientific approaches emerging from WW II that attempted to identify key risks to food security and to highlight how wartime experiences informed notions of food security within international organizations for many decades to come.

This paper examines how natural resources have been an important motive, target, and resource for warfare throughout human history.