UNIVERSITY PRESSES & BOOK SERIES
Over the last few years I have been jotting down notes about university presses and keeping track of interesting books published in series. In this post I will combine those two subjects and introduce you to a university press that publishes a very useful series of books related to the environment.
Since book stores generally stock only popular titles that will be sure to sell and since it is those titles that get reviewed in the dwindling number of newspapers that offer reviews, it is often difficult to discover books that are different. One can easily find and order books online, but you have to know what you want. If you are interested in environmental matters you are likely to find some interesting books in the lists below.
University of Washington Press
The University of Washington Press has been around for over 100 years and they note that, "As a nonprofit publisher, our mission is to develop and produce books based on value and impact rather than solely on commercial success." They offer series ranging from "Classics of Chinese Thought" to "Feminist Technosciences, but here we will focus on their Environmental Series.
Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books!!
The exclamation marks register the surprise in seeing 'Weyerhaeuser' and 'Environmental' together, but Weyerhaeuser has been a very generous sponsor of this series since 1991. "The
concept was to publish a series of scholarly books, focused
on environmental themes and written for nonacademic
audiences. Because of the unusual generosity of the Weyerhaeuser
gift, the series would support its books and authors
as few university presses are able to do, providing special
funds for illustrations, subventions to help cover permissions
fees, spectacular cover designs, and enhanced marketing."
There was some concern as to whether such a partnership would allow for complete editorial independence and the concern was addressed:
"The press intended this to be one of its premier series. There was, however, a question that many of my colleagues asked me: would a series carrying the name of one of the world’s largest timber and forest products companies be able to publish works of environmental scholarship no
matter what their politics, even if some were critical of the timber industry? Would authors even be willing to let their books be published by such a series? I had colleagues who were convinced that this would be an insurmountable problem, so I quizzed Don Ellegood about it at some length.
He assured me—indeed, wrote into my contract—that I would have complete editorial control over the books I recruited. As long as they met the press’s standards for scholarship, their interpretive point of view would have no bearing on whether they would be accepted for publication in the series."
The series WEYERHAEUSER ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS consists of three sub-series: 1) Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books; 2) Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classics and 3) Cycle of Fire. For a additional information about each of the books and the authors see this beautifully illustrated document -
Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books: A Celebration - which is available on the University of Washington Press website.
All of the titles are listed below.
For readers in the London area who have access to the Western Libraries, the titles found in one of those libraries are noted in bold, followed by [WL]. If those initials include a number, it indicates that more than one copy is available.
1. Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books "explore human relationships with natural environments in all their variety and complexity. They seek to cast new light on the ways that natural systems affect human communities, the ways that people affect the environments of which they are a part, and the ways that different cultural conceptions of nature profoundly shape our sense of the world around us."
Car Country: An Environmental History [WL2]
Cultivating Nature: The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape [WL]
Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American [WL2]
Drawing Lines in the Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas in the Pacific Northwest [WL2]
Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country[WL]
Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement [WL2]
Environmental Politics
Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest [WL2]
Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares: The Paradox of Old Growth in the Inland West [WL2]
George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation [WL]
How to Read the American West: A Field Guide
Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture, and Storytelling in the North Atlantic [WL]
Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West [WL]
Landscapes of Conflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000
Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940
Loving Nature, Fearing the State: Environmentalism and Anti-government Politics before Reagan [WL2]
Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills
Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis [WL4]
Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, [WL]
Nature Next Door: Cities and Trees in the American Northeast [WL]
On the Road Again: Montana's Changing Landscape
Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats [WL]
Plowed Under: Agriculture and Environment in the Palouse
Public Power, Private Dams: The Hells Canyon High Dam Controversy
Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon [WL]
Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta [WL]
Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of the Pacific Flyway [WL]
Seismic City: An Environmental History of San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake
Shaping the Shoreline: Fisheries and Tourism on the Monterey Coast
Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America
Tangled Roots: The Appalachian Trail and American Environmental Politics [WL]
The City Is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle
The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area
The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era [WL3]
The Fishermen's Frontier: People and Salmon in Southeast Alaska [WL]
The Lost Wolves of Japan
The Natural History of Puget Sound Country [WL]
The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush [WL2]
The Organic Profit: Rodale and the Making of Marketplace Environmentalism
The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964 [WL2]
The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States [WL2]
The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 [WL]
Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan
Vacationland: Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country [WL]
Whales and Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas
Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed
Wilderburbs: Communities on Nature's Edge [WL]
Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act
Windshield Wilderness: Cars, Roads, and Nature in Washington's National Parks [WL]
2. Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classics "are reprinted editions of key works that explore human relationships with natural environments in all their variety and complexity. Drawn from many different disciplines, they examine how natural systems affect human communities, how people affect the environments of which they are a part, and how different cultural conceptions of nature powerfully shape our sense of the world around us. These are books about the environment that have stood the test of time, and that continue to offer profound insights about the human place in nature."
A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement
Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts
DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmentalism [WL]
Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader
Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming's Past [WL]
Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action [WL]
Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics
of the Infinite [WL2]
Nuclear Reactions: Documenting American Encounters with Nuclear Energy
Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film [WL2]
The Environmental Moment: 1968-1972 [WL2]
The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805-1910 [WL2]
The Wilderness Writings of Howard Zahniser
Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station [WL]
3. Cycle of Fire "is a suite of books that collectively narrate the story of how fire and humanity have interacted to shape the Earth."
All of these books are by the same author: Stephen J. Pyne
World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth [WL2]
Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and
Europe's Encounter with the World [WL]
Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire [WL]
Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia [WL]
The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica [WL]
Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada [WL3]
