Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

Uekotter (Univ. of Birmingham, UK), an environmental humanist and cofounder of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, has written several German- and English-language volumes of environmental history, including The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany (2006); The Age of Smoke: Environmental Policy in Germany and the United States, 1880-1970 (CH, Jan'10, 47-2725); and The Greenest Nation?: A New History of German Environmentalism (CH, Oct'14, 52-1060). In this massive, superbly written volume, he chronicles global history through an environmentally driven, metaphorical "vortex." A funnel that blends natural and socioeconomic elements via sometimes delusional "expertocratic ... engines of change," the vortex reflects in part the problems that human technocratic intervention has catalyzed (p. 17). Advising readers to proceed in bits, the author chronicles the meatpacking industry in Chicago, the appearance of cholera, "Gandhi's Salt," "Synthetic Nitrogen," and 37 other human encounters with the physical environment. These vortexes reveal, not linear progress, but events that have combined to shape a future with significant obstacles. This monograph is an example of how historians might approach global environmental history. The prose, intellectual concepts, and presentation are all brilliant.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.