The Care of the Dead: A Reading List
An interdisciplinary bibliography exploring the care of the dead and how our final choices are shaped by culture, religion, economics, technology, and war.
When Did Americans Start Using Fossil Fuel?
The nineteenth-century establishment of mid-Atlantic coal mines and canals gave America its first taste of abundant fossil fuel energy.
1610: Dawn of the Extraterrestrial
Galileo's telescopic view of the Moon sparked a giant transformation in the way human beings thought about the natural world.
Longhorns Long Gone (And Returned)
The end of the era of so-called Texas Longhorns doesn’t seem to have been sentimentalized at the time. Why do we wax nostalgic about it now?
From Weapons to Wildlife?
While war is an environmental as well as human disaster, readiness and preparation for armed conflict is more ambiguous ecologically.
How Books Taught Europeans to Smoke
The printed word helped spread the inhaling habit across the continent.
The Pan-American Highway and the Darién Gap
The Pan-American Highway began a century ago with a vision of unfettered motor-vehicle access between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. What happened to the dream?
The True Story of Grizzly Adams
In order to invent a legendary hero of the Wild West, John Adams shook himself free from his life as shoemaker in Massachusetts.