On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of San Antonio and within hours overwhelmed its winding network of creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city's Latino West Side neighborhoods, killing more than eighty people. Meanwhile a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the city's North Side, wreaking considerable damage. The city's response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation. Instead the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America's poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS's emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city's diverse population. West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio's enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio's long history and the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.

This collection of environmental essays explores the threats of fire, drought, development, and fracking. Miller's thoughtful vignettes and fascinating historical interpretations clearly lay out our environmental challenges and threats due to climate change.

Miller shows how government institutions changed the meaning of American citizenship during the World War II era. He considers the state's role in creating concepts of citizenship and subjectivity by analyzing the application within military and educational institutions of systems of discipline associated with Frederick W. Taylor and scientific management.

Miller also explores a neglected aspect of Michel Foucault's concerns about citizenship and subjectivity when examining the power of institutions and bureaucracies in creating and precluding political identities. Of particular interest to scholars and students involved with American political history and theory and the sociology of work/education/war and conflict.

This visually dynamic Atlas covers the environmental history of the USA and Canada from 1492 to the present in seven chronologically-arranged chapters. Over one hundred entries discuss the events that have helped shape the North American landscape from the transformation of the wilderness into farmland by early settlers, to the Johannesburg world environmental conference. The work provides a thorough survey of the role of the environment in the social history of North America, examining how it influenced human behaviour while being transformed by it. Each chapter follows the same format containing articles analysing the following themes: Agriculture * Wildlife * Forestry * Land Use Management * Technology * Industry * Pollution * Human Habitats * Ideology and Politics.

Written in the 1950s and discovered by family members years after her death, Margaret Brown Kilik's shocking coming-of-age novel of the emotional and sexual brutality of young women's lives in wartime San Antonio deserves a place on the shelf alongside classic novels like Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding. The Duchess of Angus reworks Kilik's unusual personal history (her mother spent the 1930's running flophouse hotels all over the United States, leaving Margaret to be brought up by a host of relatives) into a riveting portrait of a young woman navigating a conflicted and rapidly changing world, one in which sex promises both freedom from convention and violent subjection to men's will. Strikingly modern in its depiction of protagonist Jane Davis and her gorgeous, unreadable friend Wade Howell, The Duchess of Anguscovers some of the same emotional territory as novels like Emma Cline's The Girls and Robyn Wasserman's Girls on Fire. Includes an introduction by Jenny Davidson and contextual essays by Laura Hernandez-Ehrisma and Char Miller.

Theodore Roosevelt's scientific curiosity and love of the outdoors proved a defining force throughout his hectic life as a rancher and explorer, police commissioner and governor of New York, vice president and president of the United States. Conservation and natural history were parts of a whole for this driven, charismatic public servant, and Roosevelt approached the natural world with joy and a passionate engagement. Drawing on an array of approaches-biographical, ecological and environmental, literary and political, Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist in the Arena analyzes this energetic man's manifold encounters with the great outdoors. George Bird Grinnell, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and William Hornaday were among the many conservationists with whom Roosevelt corresponded, collaborated, hiked, and governed-and in turn, inspired. Together, Roosevelt and his contemporaries developed a progressive argument for the conservation of natural resources as a way to construct a more democratic nation-state. This legacy also comes with some troubling domestic and global implications, as Roosevelt fused his call for the conservation of resources-natural and human, domestically and internationally-with a deep-seated conviction that some were more fit than others to control the world and define its future.

The classic study of changing attitudes toward wilderness during American history and the origins of the environmental and conservation movements "The Book of Genesis for conservationists"-Dave Foreman Since its initial publication in 1967, Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind has received wide acclaim. The Los Angeles Times listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine included it in a survey of "books that changed our world," and it has been called the "Book of Genesis for environmentalists." For the fifth edition, Nash has written a new preface and epilogue that brings Wilderness and the American Mind into dialogue with contemporary debates about wilderness. Char Miller's foreword provides a twenty-first-century perspective on how the environmental movement has changed, including the ways in which contemporary scholars are reimagining the dynamic relationship between the natural world and the built environment.

The founding chief of the U.S. Forest Service and twice governor of Pennsylvania, Gifford Pinchot was central to the early twentieth-century conservation movement in the United States and the political history and evolution of the Keystone State. This collection of Pinchot’s essays, articles, and letters reveals a gifted public figure whose work and thoughts on the environment, politics, society, and science remain startlingly relevant today. A learned man and admirably accessible writer, Pinchot showed keen insight on issues as wide-ranging as the rights of women and minorities, war, education, Prohibition, agricultural policy, land use, and the craft of politics. He developed galvanizing arguments against the unregulated exploitation of natural resources, made a clear case for thinking globally but acting locally, railed at the pernicious impact of corporate power on democratic life, and firmly believed that governments were obligated to enhance public health, increase economic opportunity, and sustain the land. Pinchot’s policy accomplishments—including the first clean-water legislation in Pennsylvania and the nation—speak to his effectiveness as a communicator and a politician. His observations on environmental issues were exceptionally prescient, as they anticipated the dilemmas currently confronting those who shape environmental public policy. Introduced and annotated by environmental historian Char Miller, this is the only comprehensive collection of Pinchot’s writings. Those interested in the history of conservation, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, American politics, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will find this book invaluable.

Through the pages of "Environmental History Review, " now "Environmental History", an entire discipline has been created and defined over time through the publication of the finest scholarship by humanists, social and natural scientists, and other professionals concerned with the complex relationship between people and our global environment. "Out of the Woods" gathers together the best of this scholarship.

Covering a broad array of topics and reflecting the continuing diversity within the field of environmental history, "Out of the Woods" begins with three theoretical pieces by William Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, and Donald Worster probing the assumptions that underlie the words and ideas historians use to analyze human interaction with the physical world. One of these - the concept of place - is the subject of a second group of essays. The political context is picked up in the third section, followed by a selection of some of the journal's most recent contributions discussing the intersection between urban and environmental history. Water's role in defining the contours of the human and natural landscape is undeniable and forms the focus of the fifth section. Finally, the global character of environmental issues emerges in three compelling articles by Alfred Crosby, Thomas Dunlap, and Stephen Pyne.

Of interest to a wide range of scholars in environmental history, law, and politics, "Out of the Woods" is intended as a reader for course use and abenchmark for the field of environmental history as it continues to develop into the next century.

Endangered ecosystem or renewable resource? How we feel about forests has to do with more than trees. This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the history of forestry in the United States, exploring the impact of the discipline on natural and human landscapes since the mid-nineteenth century. Through important articles that have helped define the field, it assesses the development of the forestry profession and the U.S. Forest Service, analyzes the political and scientific controversies that have marked forestry's evolution, and discloses the transformations in America's commitment to its forested estate. American Forests highlights the intersection of the political, social, and environmental forces that have determined the use and abuse of American forests. It examines changes both in the assumptions that have defined forest management and in the scientific approach to-and political justification for-timber harvesting in our national forests. It sheds light on the ongoing debate between utilization and conservation, addressing arguments from environmentalists, the timber industry, sportsmen, and politicians while exploring the interaction between public opinion and public policy. It provides sharp insights into the most important players in the politics of forestry, from George Perkins Marsh and Berhard Fernow to Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt. And it addresses issues as wide-ranging as budgeting, clearcutting, and the regulation of livestock grazing on national forest lands. This multifaceted volume draws on the insights of scholars in conservation and ecology, economics, history, law, and political science to make a definitive contribution to the study and practice of forestry. By both clarifying and extending recent debate about the political purpose, scientific character, and environmental rationales of forestry in America, it will help define the place of forests in our future.

The major cities of Texas have developed through a complex web of politics, society, and economics. To describe and explain the state's urban evolution, the contributors to "Urban Texas" use comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives that explore the relationships among interest groups and voting; religion, reform, gender, and race; civic clubs and suburbs; infrastructure and land development.
Texas' cities have experienced boom and expansion, bust and depression. They have also been marked by inequity and disadvantage. Today's cities face not only the limits of a period of economic downturn, but also the inheritance of a history of bias and public-sector inactivity. The story of such forces, challenges the myths that surround Texas' explosive growth and probes the staggering costs that growth has entailed.

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground water reserve extending from South Dakota through Texas, is the product of eons of accumulated glacial melts, ancient Rocky Mountain snowmelts, and rainfall, all percolating slowly through gravel beds hundreds of feet thick. Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land is an environmental history and historical geography that tells the story of human defiance and human commitment within the Ogallala region. It describes the Great Plains' natural resources, the history of settlement and dryland farming, and the remarkable irrigation technologies that have industrialized farming in the region. This newly updated third edition discusses three main issues: long-term drought and its implications, the efforts of several key groundwater management districts to regulate the aquifer, and T. Boone Pickens's failed effort to capture water from the aquifer to supply major Texas urban areas. This edition also describes the fierce independence of Texas ranchers and farmers who reject any governmental or bureaucratic intervention in their use of water, and it updates information about the impact of climate change on the aquifer and agriculture. Read Char Miller's article on theconversation.com to learn more about the Ogallala Aquifer.

President John F. Kennedy officially dedicated the Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies on September 24, 1963 to further the legacy and activism of conservationist Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946). Pinchot was the first chief of the United States Forest Service, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. During his five-year term, he more than tripled the national forest reserves to 172 million acres. A pioneer in his field, Pinchot is widely regarded as one of the architects of American conservation and an adamant steward of natural resources for future generations.
Author Char Miller highlights many of the important contributions of the Pinchot Institute through its first fifty years of operation. As a union of the United States Forest Service and the Conservation Foundation, a private New York-based think tank, the institute was created to formulate policy and develop conservation education programs. Miller chronicles the institution's founding, a donation of the Pinchot family, at its Grey Towers estate in Milford, Pennsylvania. He views the contributions of Pinchot family members, from the institute's initial conception by Pinchot's son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, through the family's ongoing participation in current conservation programming. Miller describes the institute's unique fusion of policy makers, scientists, politicians, and activists to increase our understanding of and responses to urban and rural forestry, water quality, soil erosion, air pollution, endangered species, land management and planning, and hydraulic franking.
Miller explores such innovative programs as Common Waters, which works to protect the local Delaware River Basin as a drinking water source for millions; EcoMadera, which trains the residents of Cristobal Colon in Ecuador in conservation land management and sustainable wood processing; and the Forest Health-Human Health Initiative, which offers health-care credits to rural American landowners who maintain their carbon-capturing forestlands. Many of these individuals are age sixty-five or older and face daunting medical expenses that may force them to sell their land for timber.
Through these and countless other collaborative endeavors, the Pinchot Institute has continued to advance its namesake's ambition to protect ecosystems for future generations and provide vital environmental services in an age of a burgeoning population and a disruptive climate.

The environmental history of Israel is as intriguing and complex as the nation itself. Situated on a mere 8,630 square miles, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf, varying from desert to forest, Israel's natural environment presents innumerable challenges to its growing population. The country's conflicted past and present, diverse religions, and multitude of cultural influences powerfully affect the way Israelis imagine, question, and shape their environment. Zionism, from the late nineteenth onward, has tempered nearly every aspect of human existence. Scarcities of usable land and water coupled with border conflicts and regional hostilities have steeled Israeli's survival instincts. As this volume demonstrates, these powerful dialectics continue to undergird environmental policy and practice in Israel today.
"Between Ruin and Restoration" assembles leading experts in policy, history, and activism to address Israel's continuing environmental transformation from the biblical era to the present and beyond, with a particular focus on the past one hundred and fifty years. The chapters also reflect passionate public debates over meeting the needs of Israel's population and preserving its natural resources.
The chapters detail the occupations of the Ottoman Empire and British colonialists in eighteenth and nineteenth century Palestine, as well as Fellaheen and pastoralist Bedouin tribes, and how they shaped much of the terrain that greeted early Zionist settlers. Following the rise of the Zionist movement, the rapid influx of immigrants and ensuing population growth put new demands on water supplies, pollution controls, sanitation, animal populations, rangelands and biodiversity, forestry, marine policy, and desertification. Additional chapters view environmental politics nationally and internationally, the environmental impact of Israel's military, and considerations for present and future sustainability.

Elers Koch, a key figure in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service, was among the first American-trained silviculturists, a pioneering forest manager, and a master firefighter. By horse and on foot, he helped establish the boundaries of most of our national forests in the West, designed new fire-control strategies and equipment, and served during the formative years of the agency. Forty Years a Forester, Koch's entertaining and illuminating memoir, reveals one remarkable man's contributions to the incipient science of forest management and his role in building the human relationships and policies that helped make the U.S. Forest Service, prior to World War II, the most respected bureau in the federal government. This new, fully annotated edition of Koch's memoir offers an unparalleled look at the Forest Service's formative ambitions to regulate the national forests and grasslands and reminds us of the principled commitment that Koch and his peers exemplified as they built the national forest system and nurtured the essential conservation ethic that continues to guide our use of the public lands.

The founding chief of the U.S. Forest Service and twice governor of Pennsylvania, Gifford Pinchot was central to the early twentieth-century conservation movement in the United States and the political history and evolution of the Keystone State. This collection of Pinchot's essays, articles, and letters reveals a gifted public figure whose work and thoughts on the environment, politics, society, and science remain startlingly relevant today. A learned man and admirably accessible writer, Pinchot showed keen insight on issues as wide-ranging as the rights of women and minorities, war, education, Prohibition, agricultural policy, land use, and the craft of politics. He developed galvanizing arguments against the unregulated exploitation of natural resources, made a clear case for thinking globally but acting locally, railed at the pernicious impact of corporate power on democratic life, and firmly believed that governments were obligated to enhance public health, increase economic opportunity, and sustain the land. Pinchot's policy accomplishments-including the first clean-water legislation in Pennsylvania and the nation-speak to his effectiveness as a communicator and a politician. His observations on environmental issues were exceptionally prescient, as they anticipated the dilemmas currently confronting those who shape environmental public policy. Introduced and annotated by environmental historian Char Miller, this is the only comprehensive collection of Pinchot's writings. Those interested in the history of conservation, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, American politics, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will find this book invaluable.