Char Miller – författare

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.

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.

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.

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 historical atlas chronologically covers American environmental history through the use of four-color maps, photos, and diagrams, and in written entries from well known scholars.Organized into seven categories, each chapter covers: agriculture * wildlife and forestry * land use and management * technology and industry * pollution and human heath * human habitats * and ideology and politics.With valuable reference aids--including bibliographies, sources for further research, an extensive index, and newly designed maps--this is an indispensable tool for students and educators alike.For a detailed contents, a generous selection of sample articles, and more, visit the website Atlas of US and Canadian Environmental History website.Also includes 46 color maps.

Highlighting the political, social, and environmental forces that have determined the use and abuse of American forests, this book seeks to challenge forest management and the scientific approach to timber harvesting in national forests.

Over the course of a year, in just one national forest in California, raids on illegal marijuana growing operations yielded 19,710 pounds of infrastructure, 138 ounces of restricted poisons, 4,595 pounds of fertilizer, 12 gallons of common pesticides, 5.6 miles of waterlines, and 102 propane bottles. Even as efforts to legalize marijuana accelerate, such “trespass grows” spread exponentially—as does their effect on the environment. The nature of this impact on the land and in the political arena is the pressing issue addressed in Where There’s Smoke. This first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary anthology draws on the insights of scientists, researchers, and activists and ranges across the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences to explore the troubling environmental consequences of illegal marijuana production on public, private, and tribal lands.Classified as a Schedule 1 drug, marijuana has been a central focus of the so-called War on Drugs—with the perverse result of shifting marijuana production from Mexico to the United States and with unanticipated consequences for the natural environment. Where There’s Smoke assesses the broad spectrum of the policy’s effect on land and water, flora and fauna, as well as the firsthand challenges faced by those tasked with responding to this tangled and often dangerous state of affairs. In its broad scope, varied perspective, and depth of detail, the book will prove essential to an understanding of the complex social and environmental ramifications of marijuana policy and politics in the United States.

2019 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleThe 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.

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\u2019s most recent contributions discussing the intersection between urban and environmental history. Water\u2019s 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 a benchmark for the field of environmental history as it continues to develop into the next century.

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.

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 Col\u00f3n 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.

For more than a century, America's national forests have proved an environmental gift and cultural treasure, our spectacular backyard. Under the management of the U.S. Forest Service, this system of public lands encompasses 193 million acres of mountains, prairies, rivers, and canyons-much of it undiscovered, but accessible for hiking, kayaking, fishing, and winter sports. Officially published with the U.S. Forest Service, this book features the thirty most notable national forests- while also celebrating more than one hundred different national forests in forty-four states-from the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the Olympics of Washington. Unlike the national parks, Americans can use these lands for all manner of recreation, truly earning these tremendous resources the moniker of America's backyard. This book is a treasure for all readers who use and cherish these lands.

In less than a century, the American West has transformed from a predominantly rural region to one where most people live in metropolitan centers. Cities and Nature in the American West offers provocative analyses of this transformation. Each essay explores the intersection of environmental, urban, and western history, providing a deeper understanding of the com- plex processes by which the urban West has shaped and been shaped by its sustaining environment. The book also considers how the West’s urban development has altered the human experience and perception of nature, from the administration and marketing of national parks to the consumer roots of popular environ- mentalism; the politics of land and water use; and the challenges of environmental inequities. A number of essays address the cultural role of wilderness, nature, and such activities as camping. Others examine the increasingly per- vasive power of the West’s urban areas and urbanites to redefine the very foundations and future of the American West.

The first comprehensive study of the park, past and present, Death Valley National Park probes the environmental and human history of this most astonishing desert. Established as a national monument in 1933, Death Valley was an anomaly within the national park system. Though many who knew this landscape were convinced that its stark beauty should be preserved, to do so required a reconceptualisation of what a park consists of, grassroots and national support for its creation, and a long and difficult political struggle to secure congressional sanction. This history begins with a discussion of the physical setting, its geography and geology, and descriptions of the Timbisha, the first peoples to inhabit this tough and dangerous landscape. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new arrivals came to exploit the mineral resources in the region and develop permanent agricultural and resort settlements. Although Death Valley was established as a national monument in 1933, fear of the harsh desert precluded widespread acceptance by both the visiting public and its own administrative agency. As a result, Death Valley lacked both support and resources. This volume details the many debates over the park’s size; conflicts between miners, farmers, the military, and wilderness advocates; the treatment of the Timbisha; and the impact of tourists on its cultural and natural resources. In time, Death Valley came to be seen as one of the great natural wonders of the United States and was elevated to full national park status in 1994. The history of Death Valley National Park embodies the many tensions confronting American environmentalism.

This visually dynamic historical atlas chronologically covers American environmental history through the use of four-color maps, photos, and diagrams, and in written entries from well known scholars.Organized into seven categories, each chapter covers: agriculture * wildlife and forestry * land use and management * technology and industry * polluti

This visually dynamic historical atlas chronologically covers American environmental history through the use of four-color maps, photos, and diagrams, and in written entries from well known scholars.Organized into seven categories, each chapter covers: agriculture * wildlife and forestry * land use and management * technology and industry * polluti

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.

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.

This new biography, the first in more than three decades, offers a fresh interpretation of the life and work of the famed conservationist and Progressive politician. In addition to considering Gifford Pinchot's role in the environmental movement, historian Char Miller sets forth an engaging description and analysis of the man-his character, passions, and personality-and the larger world through which he moved. The author brings together insights from cultural and social history and recently discovered primary sources to support a new interpretation of Gifford Pinchot, whose activism not only helped define environmental politics in early twentieth century America but remains strikingly relevant today.

For the past five decades the Texas Observer has been an essential voice in Texas culture and politics, championing honest government, civil rights, labor, and the environment, while providing a platform for many of the state's most passionate and progressive voices. Included are ninety-one selections from Roy Bedichek, Lou Dubose, Ronnie Dugger, Dagoberto Gilb, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Larry McMurtry, Maury Maverick Jr., Willie Morris, Debbie Nathan, and others. To mark the Observer's fiftieth anniversary, Char Miller has selected a cross section of the best work to appear in its pages. Not only does the collection pay homage to an important alternative voice in Texas journalism, it also serves as a progressive chronicle of a half-century of life in the Lone Star State--a state that has spawned three presidents in the last forty years. If Texas is, as some say, a crucible for national politics, then Fifty Years of the Texas Observer can be read as a casebook for issues that concern citizens in all fifty states. Molly Ivins's foreword gives historical background for the Observer and sets the stage for the book.

For the past five decades the Texas Observer has been an essential voice in Texas culture and politics, championing honest government, civil rights, labor, and the environment, while providing a platform for many of the state’s most passionate and progressive voices. Included are ninety-one selections from Roy Bedichek, Lou Dubose, Ronnie Dugger, Dagoberto Gilb, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Larry McMurtry, Maury Maverick Jr., Willie Morris, Debbie Nathan, and others.To mark the Observer’s fiftieth anniversary, Char Miller has selected a cross section of the best work to appear in its pages. Not only does the collection pay homage to an important alternative voice in Texas journalism, it also serves as a progressive chronicle of a half-century of life in the Lone Star State—a state that has spawned three presidents in the last forty years. If Texas is, as some say, a crucible for national politics, then Fifty Years of the Texas Observer can be read as a casebook for issues that concern citizens in all fifty states.Molly Ivins''s foreword gives historical background for the Observer and sets the stage for the book.

Char Miller''s collection of essays provides an insightful survey of San Antonio and South Texas. The essays are grouped into six thematic sections: an overview; natural and environmental history; water issues; urban development; politics; and the city''s future. Miller describes the First Friday Art Walks in Southtown, where the promenade reenacts the pedestrian traffic envisioned by the San Antonio founders when they planned the city around a central square and cathedral. He recreates the history behind the Alamo Quarry, when the upscale shopping center was a cement factory and self-contained community. Ranging further afield, he recounts how the Aplomado Falcon made a come-back in the Rio Grande Valley, and how the river in the same valley has fared in water wars between the United States and Mexico. In the four essays devoted to water in San Antonio, Miller subtly and successfully portrays how water has shaped the region''s demographic and political realities.

On the Edge grew out of a lifetime spent living and traveling across the American Southwest, from San Antonio to Los Angeles. Char Miller examines this borderland region through a native''s eyes and contemplates its considerable conflicts. Internal to the various US states and Mexico''s northern tier, there are struggles over water, debates over undocumented immigrants, the criminalizing of the border, and the region''s evolution into a no-man''s land.The book investigates how we live on this contested land --how we make our place in its oft-arid terrain; an ecosystem that burns easily and floods often and defies our efforts to nestle in its foothills, canyons, and washes.Exploring the challenges in the Southwest of learning how to live within this complex natural system while grasping its historical and environmental frameworks. Understanding these framing devices is critical to reaching the political accommodations necessary to build a more generous society, a more habitable landscape, and a more just community, whatever our documented status or species.

In Not So Golden State, leading environmental historian Char Miller looks below the surface of California''s ecological history to expose some of its less glittering conundrums. In this necessary work, Miller asks tough questions as we stand at the edge of a human-induced natural disaster in the region and beyond. He details policy steps and missteps in public land management and examines the impact of recreation on national forests, parks, and refuges, assessing efforts to restore wild land habitat, riparian ecosystems, and endangered species.Why, during a devastating five-year drought, is the Central Valley’s agribusiness still irrigating its fields as if it were business as usual? What’s unusual, Miller reveals, is that northern counties rich in groundwater sell it off to make millions while draining their aquifers toward eventual mud. Why, when contemporary debate over oil and gas drilling questions reasonable practices, are extractive industries targeting Chaco Canyon National Historic Park and its ancient sites, which are of inestimable value to Native Americans? How do we begin to understand “local,” a concept of hope for modern environmentalism? After all, Miller says, what we define as local determines how we might act in its defense.To inhabit a place requires placed-based analyses, whatever the geographic scope—examinations rooted in a precise, physical reality. To make a conscientious life in a suburb, floodplain, fire zone, or coastline requires a heightened awareness of these landscapes’ past so that we can develop an intensified responsibility for their present condition and future prospects. Building a more robust sense of justice is the key to creating resilient, habitable, and equitable communities.Miller turns to Aldo Leopold’s insight that “all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point,” a location humans return to "again and again to organize another search for a durable scale of values.” This quest, a reflection of our ambition to know ourselves in relation to time and space, to organize our energy and structure our insights, is as inevitable as it is unending.Turning his focus to the tensions along the California coastline, Miller ponders the activities of whale watching and gazing at sea otters, thinking about the implications of the human desire to protect endangered flora and fauna, which makes the shoreline a fraught landscape and a source of endless stories about the past and present.In the Los Angeles region these connections are more obvious, given its geography. The San Gabriel Mountains rise sharply above the valleys below, offering some of the steepest relief on the planet. Three major river systems—the Santa Ana, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles—cut through the range’s sheer canyons, carrying an astonishing amount of debris that once crashed into low-lying areas with churning force. Today the rivers are constrained by flood-control dams and channels. Major wildfires, sparked by annual drought, high heat, and fierce Santa Ana winds, move at lightning speed and force thousands to flee.The city’s legendary smog, whose origins lie in car culture, was fueled in part by oil brought to the region''s surface in the late nineteenth century. It left Angelenos gasping for breath as climatic conditions turned exhaust into a toxic ozone layer trapped by the mountains that back in the day were hard to see. Clearing the befouled skies took decades.Every bit as complex is the enduring effort to regenerate riparian health and restore wildlife habitat in a concrete-hardened landscape. The emerging tensions are similar to those threading through the U.S. Forest Service’s management of the Angeles National Forest, exacerbated whenever a black bear ambles into a nearby subdivision.How we build ourselves into these spaces depends on the removal of competing users or uses: a historic strawberry patch gives way to a housing development, a memorial forest goes up in smoke, a small creek tells a larger tale of the human impress, and struggles over water—a perennial issue in this dry land—remind us we''re not as free of the past as we''d like to think.Neither are we removed from the downwind consequences of our choice to live in fire’s path. The West does not burn every summer; it just seems that way. And not every fire is a smoke signal of distress. Picking through the region’s fiery terrain is as tricky as trying to extinguish a roaring blaze in the August heat. There are lessons to be had by examining how we respond to the annual conflagrations.The Wallow Fire, which in 2011 burned hundreds of thousands of acres in remote Arizona, sparked equal amounts of political grandstanding and hand-wringing about wildfire-fighting strategies. Beyond the headlines and flashy, smoke-filled images lay another reality. The creation of defensible space and the thinning of forests communities—signs of homeowners'' and state and federal agencies'' proactive intervention—meant few structures burned during the monthlong firestorm. That such good news is rarely reported is part and parcel of another ethical dilemma too rarely acknowledged: the decision to live in fire zones should come coupled with homeowners’ responsibility to do all they can to ensure their homes don''t go up in smoke. How they build their homes and landscape its environs are essential steps in defending their space. That obligation comes with another, made clear in the 2013 Yarnell Hill, which took the lives of nineteen firefighters. To make our houses fire-safe is to give firefighters a fighting chance.This reciprocity and the social compact it depends on require us to believe we inhabit common ground with our neighbors, a realization that should build a stronger sense of community. But it''s a tough concept to promote in a bewilderingly antisocial political environment, when budgets for fire prevention are slashed as part of larger efforts to defund the nation-state. Or when the very reasons some seek to live in isolated, mountainous environs clash with the larger need to act in concert with their communities. Fires illuminate many things, not least the ties that bind and those that are frayed.Miller develops his argument from a variety of places and perspectives. Most of the pieces ask a series of questions about a particular landscape—Gila National Forest, Death Valley, Zion, Arches, and Rocky Mountain National Parks, and a host of other iconic western scenic spots. Why do we conceive of wilderness as a preserve, separate and inviolate? Who benefits—or does not—from the idea that such landscapes are, or ought to be, untrammeled? Why has this intellectual construction, and the preservationist ethos it depends on, come to dominate contemporary environmentalism?Related queries bubble up after Miller spends time in the newest national park, Pinnacles in central California, or one of the most venerable, the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. What impact has the long history of tourism and recreation had on these public lands? Maintaining trails that weave through the Yosemite Valley is an arduous, incessant task made more difficult by the visitors pouring in to John Muir’s favorite terrain or rushing to rock climb in Minerva Hoyt’s beloved Joshua Tree. Still more daunting is the prospect of sustained ecological restoration and habitat regeneration under current conditions and those that climate change is generating across the West.Once again Aldo Leopold can be a guide. “A member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history,” he once observed, adding that many “historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land.” Only when “the concept of land as a community really penetrates our intellectual life” will history, as a subject and methodology, become fully realized.Not So Golden State contributes powerfully toward the realization of this enduring cross-generational endeavor.

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.

Drought and fires, floods and rising tides: These and other climate-driven forces are compelling us to examine our role as inhabitants of our imperiled planet. In over forty vitally important essays and vignettes, Natural Consequences is Char Miller’s literary tour de force that illuminates the historical background of how we got here, what we need to do now, and how we can thrive into the future.Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, and author of books, articles, and essays, Char Miller’s narratives are not only expansive in scope, but also intimate and personal. Living in Southern California, he walks us through the environmental touchstones of his backyard, through his neighborhood, into the widely varied ecospheres of California, and then the world beyond.The essays encourage readers to look for themselves at the meaning behind environmental disasters and injustices, but also examine the tiniest details that can be encountered simply by taking a walk. As Char Miller wanders, we see the world anew through his eyes and words. And we are better for it.