Content Index

Earthquakes occur along fault lines, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Italy. Fault Lines follows the history of these places before and after their destruction, explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters, and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins.

The 1928 hurricane that hit Okeechobee was one of the most severe hurricanes in US history. It caused more than 4,000 fatalities as well as widespread damage in the Florida area.

On 8 October 1871 a brush fire took hold of northeastern Wisconsin that destroyed acres upon acres of woodland areas and settlements and took up to 1,500 lives.

The history of the Swiss National Park is told for the first time in Creating Wilderness. The deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park, as implemented in Yellowstone, was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

Powerless Science? looks at complex historical, social, and political dynamics, made up of public controversies, environmental and health crises, economic interests, and political responses, and demonstrates how and to what extent scientific knowledge about toxicants has been caught between scientific, economic, and political imperatives.

National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, Civilizing Nature adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time.

Managing the Unknown offers essays that show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress. This volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.

Disrupted Landscapes focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation’s forests, farmlands, and rivers.

The Nature of German Imperialism: Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa. Cover.

This article examines the energy transition in the iron industry and studies the consequence of this switch to coal-fueling technology upon forests.