Bookshelf
Triumph of the City
As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live.
The End of the Suburbs
“This book is a steel fist in a velvet glove. Beneath Leigh Gallagher’s smooth, elegant prose there is a methodical smashing of the suburban paradigm. When all is done, a few shards remain.”
Green Manhattan
While the conventional wisdom condemns it as an environmental nightmare, Manhattan is by far the greenest place in America, argues this stimulating eco-urbanist manifesto.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
“One of the most remarkable books ever written about the city… a primary work. The research apparatus is not pretentious—it is the eye and the heart—but it has given us a magnificent study of what gives life and spirit to the city.”
The City in History
Lewis Mumford’s massive historical study brings together a wide array of evidence–from the earliest group habitats to medieval towns to the modern centers of commerce (as well as dozens of black-and-white illustrations)–to show how the urban form has changed throughout human civilization.
Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America
“Cities are the future of the human race, and Jeff Speck knows how to make them work. In Walkable City, he persuasively explains how to create rational urban spaces and improve quality of life by containing the number one vector of global environmental catastrophe: the automobile.”
After the Grizzly
“On the landmark species-saving law’s 40th anniversary, environmental historian Peter Alagona explains why it doesn’t quite work, and offers a path toward recovery.”
Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader
Containing seminal, representative, and contemporary work in the field, this volume and the editorial commentary is designed for use on both undergraduate and postgraduate ecocritical literature courses.
Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century
This book showcases the recent explosive expansion of environmental criticism, which is actively transforming three areas of broad interest in contemporary literary and cultural studies: history, scale, and science.
Wilderness and the American Mind
Roderick Nash’s classic study of America’s changing attitudes toward wilderness has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times has listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century.
Milton and Ecology
Milton and Ecology explores the ideological underpinnings of our current environmental crisis by way of early modern texts, in this case through Milton’s reevaluation of dualistic theology, metaphysical philosophy, and early modern subjectivism.
What Else Is Pastoral?
“What Else Is Pastoral?, notable for its theoretical sophistication and breadth of reference, is worthwhile precisely because it is humble enough to take representations of the countryside as actually being about the countryside first.”
