By Derek Hyra, author of Slow and Sudden Violence: Why and When Uprisings OccurApril 29, 1992: I am in Harlem, preparing for my AAU basketball team practice in Riverside Church’s basement. As I am warming up, my coach suggests I leave immediately. He had heard unrest was likely to erupt on 125th Str...
By Stacy Torres, author of At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America
I never planned to study older adults. Old places that survived waves of gentrification initially fascinated me, as a lifelong New Yorker who had struggled to make ends meet and mourned the loss of beloved ...
Why has Silicon Valley become the model for addressing today’s myriad social and ecological crises? With this book, Julie Guthman digs into the impoverished solutions for food and agriculture currently emerging from Silicon Valley, urging us to stop trying to fix our broken food system th...
This post was originally published on DeSmog.
By Ned Randolph, author of Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta: A Call for Reclamation
I grew up in the shadow of the Mississippi River, whose mythology pressed upon my imagination.
Its culture inspired iconic works and pol...
Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of a postwar Superfund site. Disabled Ecologies tells the story of this contamination and its ripple effects through the largely Mexican American community living above. Drawing on her own complex...
Two decades ago, a group of Indonesian agricultural workers began occupying the agribusiness plantation near their homes. In the years since, members of this remarkable movement have reclaimed collective control of their land and cultivated diverse agricultural forests on it, repairing...
Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta uses the story of mud to answer a deceptively simple question: How can a place uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise be one of the nation’s most promiscuous producers and consumers of fossil fuels? Organized around New Orleans and South Lou...
The IJURR Book Series has established itself as a cornerstone in the field of global urban studies, pushing the boundaries of critical, interdisciplinary, and theory-driven urban research across the globe. Entering a new phase with its partnership with UC Press starting in 2024, the IJ...
In Seeding Empire, Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past—and future—of global agriculture. Eddens connects today’s efforts to cultivate a “Green Revolution in Africa” to a history of American projects that introduced capitalist agriculture across the Global South. ...
By Shannon Cram, author of Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility
“A powerfully researched and important look at the ravages of nuclear waste remediation.”—One of the Best Indie Books of 2023, Kirkus Reviews
I stumbled into this project in 200...