This is the last “what’s new” post of 2024. Plenty of new books to check out!
Happy reading — and happy new year!
Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy
Edited by Robert Lopresti
The way we treat the world is a crime-fifteen of them, in fact. Some of the best and most honored mystery writers today have written new stories for this book dealing with environmental issues including pollution, wildfire, invasive species, climate change, recycling, and many more.
Authors include Michael Bracken, Susan Breen, Sarah M. Chen, Barb Goffman, Karen Harrington, Janice Law, R.T. Lawton, Robert Lopresti, Jon McGoran, Josh Pachter, Gary Phillips, S.J. Rozan, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mark Stevens, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden.
The stories cover a wide variety of styles including noir, comic, caper, psychological, police procedural, and even a tale inspired by comic books. Putting their money where their mouths are, the authors have chosen ecologically-themed non-profits who will receive half the royalties.
Interpreting Meat: Theorizing the Commodification and Consumption of Animals
By Teddy Duncan, Jr.
Meat is the essential object dislodged in human-animal relations: in its commonplace, everyday ubiquity and distanced violence, it defies the innocuous or protective-paternalistic stance that we ordinarily take towards animals. Through looking at meat’s status as a fundamental and visceral part of human-animal relations—particularly its commodification and consumption—this book exhibits how animals fit into human discursive practices and how this discursive position determines our perspective of animals and, subsequently, our treatment of them. Modernity is a distinct stage of meat production and accordingly, the meat-commodity must be examined in all its contemporary specificity as an economic, linguistic, philosophical, psychoanalytic, and material object.
Using theoretical prisms that have been largely overlooked in animal studies, such as Marxian analysis and Lacanian-Žižekian psychoanalysis, and rejecting popular approaches, such as analogical thinking and effacement of human-animal difference, this book offers new insights into the meat-commodity—and new ways to orient ourselves towards animal life and death.
Designed Forests: A Cultural History
By Dan Handel
Designed Forests: A Cultural History explores the unique kinship that exists between forests and spatial design; the forest’s influence on architectural culture and practice; and the potentials and pitfalls of “forest thinking” for more sustainable and ethical ways of doing architecture today. It tackles these subjects by focusing on architecture’s own dispositions, which stem from an ecology of metaphor that surrounds its encounters with the forest and undergird ideas about Nature and natural systems. The book weaves together global narratives and chapters explore a range of topics, such as the invention of forest plans in colonial India, the war waged on the jungles of Vietnam, economic land use concepts in rural Germany, precolonial ecological pasts in Manhattan, and technologically saturated forests in California.
Everyday Choices for the Earth- Hope through Our Multiplied Actions
By Debbie McGuire
Despite increasingly worse predictions for the earth’s climate, its inhabitants do not have to feel helpless or hopeless. Individuals CAN take numerous little actions, that when multiplied with the actions of many other individuals, will make a difference. Through understanding how so many items used everyday impact the environment, one can begin to make better climate-friendly choices among alternatives. Quite often the reader will be surprised to learn about the process for bringing a product to his/her door. The raw materials, chemical inputs and energy requirements can be astounding. Knowing these details allows the reader to comprehend why eating less beef, not using paper plates, not flying at night, etc., are recommended. The “Numbers” shed light on the huge impact of some choices. The “To Do” lists provide handy guides for everyday choices that will add up!
When the Earth Died
By Peter Routis
“When the Earth Died” is a narrative that follows the life of Orson and Niles in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world (2049), where the world has been ravaged by fires, environmental collapse, societal breakdown, climate change and disease which have drastically altered life on Earth. The story delves into themes of survival, loss, hope, the human condition and the existence (or the absence) of God. It explores themes of environmental destruction and human responsibility. Orson, Niles, Ciara and her son Kolten, struggle to survive this harsh new reality. They reflect on their pasts and strive to find meaning and stability in their disrupted lives as they navigate through the ruins of their world, dealing with personal loss, survival, the search for loved ones and the bonds of family. Orson is a reflective character who contemplates the destruction of nature and the human condition. Niles is driven by the hope of finding his sister, Aberdeen, who was separated from him during a catastrophic fire that destroyed their town and family. The narrative explores themes of grief, survival, the impact of human actions on nature, and the quest for meaning and connection in a devastated world.
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the Tasmanian mystery Devils Island. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
