With their towering, cinnamon-colored trunks and dusky green canopies, ponderosa pine has long been a charismatic icon of the American West. Yet a quiet unraveling has begun: in the past decade, in a vast area from Santa Fe to the Sierras, more...
Books
The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit
In the nineteenth century, Manhattan’s streets were so choked with pedestrians, horses, vehicles, and vendors that a trip from City Hall to Central Park could take hours. Alfred Beach had the perfect solution: build a giant pneumatic tube...
288 pages
6 x 9
57 illustrations and photos
Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit
“A deeply meditative book in the vein of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass.” —Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced...
256 pages
6 x 9
28 photographs
50 Steps to Unplug, Become Self-Sufficient, and Build the Homestead of Your Dreams
Ryan Mitchell never thought he would go off the grid. Yet this self-described desk-jockey with no carpentry skills today lives on 11 acres in a house he designed and powers with solar, gets his water from a well, has a composting toilet and...
224 pages
6 x 9
1figure, 1 Author photo
The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction
The world’s largest public works investment visible from space, the Interstate Highway System and the hundreds of thousands of miles of supporting roadways, are frequently hailed as a marvel and triumph of engineering. President Eisenhower...
256 pages
6 x 9
9 black-and-white illustrations, photographs, line art, and maps and 6 graphs
Every Journalist's Guide to Covering Climate Change
It’s Monday morning and your editor assigns you a story about a housing project where several residents have been hospitalized because of heat stroke. Is this a climate story? Is it a climate justice story? No one would have thought so...
304 pages
6 x 9
6 photos and illustrations
Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement
In the US, police conduct millions of traffic stops for reasons unrelated to safety. Study after study confirm that Black drivers experience higher rates of non-safety stops, searches, and use of force than White drivers.
In ...
200 pages
6 x 9
14 black-and-white images
Ice, Exploration, and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World
Almost two centuries after British explorer Sir John Franklin and his men died amid paralyzing cold and ice in pursuit of the mythical Northwest Passage, the Arctic—in response to temperatures greater than at any time in the last ten...
240 pages
6 x 9
1 map, and 1 author photo
Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future
Climate change is no longer an abstract threat. Day after day, an already disrupted climate is impacting the lives of millions, and the time available to curtail climate change is alarmingly limited. Going for zero greenhouse gas emissions...
296 pages
6 x 9
50 black-and-white illustrations, photographs, line art, and maps; 1 author photo