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Join us in celebrating Earth Day, a global reminder to protect our environment and promote sustainability. This year's focus is on tackling plastic pollution with the theme "Planet vs Plastics." 

Let's make a positive impact together by reading and learning!

Calling Wild Places Home: A Memoir in Essays, by Laura Waterman, is a collection of poignant and vulnerable essays that weave together seemingly disparate themes of wild places and mountain stewardship, books and reading, and building a new life after loss. 

"A legendary mountain figure and revered voice on backcountry ethics, Laura Waterman is an American treasure. Her new memoir illuminates the challenges and rewards of homesteading and wilderness stewardship. It also dives deeper into her marriage to the prolific writer and climber Guy Waterman, whose shadow looms over the Northeast because of his tragic decision to intentionally freeze to death atop Mt. Lafayette in New Hampshire. In sharp contrast, Laura chose life—and this book is an embrace of all its mystery, pain, and joy." — Stephen Kurczy, author of The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence

"In this latest memoir, celebrated wilderness steward Laura Waterman reflects on her years of homesteading, and her relationships—with herself, her late husband Guy, and the world they dove headlong into together. Examining a world under our modern noses, should we slow down to see it, Calling Wild Places Home rings like a clarion bell: honest, unflinching, and true. Now more than ever, we need Waterman's voice." — Michael Wejchert, author of Hidden Mountains: Survival and Reckoning after a Climb Gone Wrong

"Calling Wild Places Home is timely in its portrayal of a remarkable life centered on the essentials and, through it, the much deeper connection we can realize with ourselves and natural spaces. Through a series of vulnerable and poignant essays, Waterman demonstrates that the standard definitions we so often rely on to validate how we love, sacrifice, renew, and persevere most likely require some focused introspection." — Ty Gagne, author of The Last Traverse: Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites

"Laura Waterman's Calling Wild Places Home is an extraordinary story. She and her husband, Guy Waterman, authored the bestselling book Forest and Crag, a history of hiking and trail blazing in the Northeast Mountains. Her new book, part memoir and part anthology of Laura Waterman's previously published essays, focuses on two interrelated stories: their lives together and their experiences as mountain climbers, homesteaders, and stewards of nature. Part of the power of the memoir lies in her depiction of her husband's demons, which culminated in his suicide in 2000. She writes sensitively and honestly about this event, offering us insights gleaned from a twenty-year perspective. As she observes, 'There is nothing like the passage of time to help us gain clarity with which to see long-ago events.' Yet Calling Wild Places Home evokes the spirit of Thoreau's Walden in its affirmation of self-reliance and resilience, but Laura Waterman's voice is uniquely her own. Readers will remember her inspirational, revelatory, life-affirming book for a long time." — Jeffrey Berman, author of Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning

Value, Beauty, and Nature: The Philosophy of Organism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Ethics, by Brian G. Henning, argues that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics.

"Value, Beauty, and Nature provides in one volume a clear and concise introduction to both process metaphysics and process environmental ethics and the connection between the two. Henning makes a strong case for the need to bring metaphysical concepts to bear on issues in environmental philosophy in that ecoholism and related positions are already implicitly metaphysical. He shows the problems involved if metaphysical generality is either ignored altogether or left implicit in environmental ethics, and also makes a strong case for process metaphysics, in particular. In many ways, process thinkers, as Henning shows, led the way in the early days of environmental ethics, yet their views have not yet received the attention they deserve." — Daniel Dombrowski, author of Process Mysticism

Grounding God: Religious Responses to the Anthropocene, by Arianne Conty, looks at how different religious traditions (Christian, Buddhist, neopagan, and animist) have attempted to resacralize the earth and provide new values that include the more-than-human world.

"This is an important and prodigiously informed contribution to our understanding of the intersections between religion and the Anthropocene (or Anthropocenes). Furthermore, it focuses on the ways in which religion both presupposes and potentiates certain kinds of ontologies that either protect nature or turn it into a cheap externality. In this sense, it is a contribution to what is called 'philosophical theology' or the 'philosophy of religion.' It has the additional virtue of being a comparative religious and philosophical text. The discussions of Fudo, neopaganism, and animism (or shamanism) are fascinating, very well informed, and most appropriate given the main thrust of the book, namely, to develop an ecosophia for the Anthropocene." — Eduardo Mendieta, Pennsylvania State University

Garbage in Popular Culture: Consumption and the Aesthetics of Waste, by Mehita Iqani, explores the cultural politics of garbage in contemporary global society.

"Among the book's greatest strengths is its insistence that waste has come to define humanity. A powerful argument emerges about the significance of 'waste-work' and the way in which 'trashscapes' are increasingly defining the world around us. I embrace the book's call that, 'perhaps we all need to become trashologists.'" — Eleftheria J. Lekakis, author of Coffee Activism and the Politics of Fair Trade Consumption in the Global North

An Ontology of Trash: The Disposable and Its Problematic Nature, by Greg Kennedy, is a philosophical exploration of the problematic nature of the disposable.

"…Kennedy offers a timely intervention that will be of interest to many. In particular, it seems as though philosophers, ecologists, environmentalists and individuals or group of similar ilk would get the most traction from this material … there is much to appreciate in this text." — Symposium

"…a contribution to ontology in the Heideggerian tradition. It is also an important addition to the literature on environmental philosophy … The book will interest more than phenomenologists and will benefit those preoccupied with the environment and the problem of landfill pollution." — Comptes Rendus

"This book is written gracefully and engagingly. Trash is a surprisingly revealing lens on contemporary culture. Kennedy's approach is incisive without being zealous and critical without being negative." — Albert Borgmann, author of Real American Ethics: Taking Responsibility for Our Country

"I particularly liked the discussion of fast food, Heidegger, embodiment, and the city. There is much that is swift and brilliant in the matters covered, telling and insightful in the multileveled critique of modernity." — Drew Leder, author of Sparks of the Divine: Finding Inspiration in Our Everyday World

Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin & Sean Morey, examines the rhetorical role of images in communicating environmental ideas.

"…Ecosee … makes major contributions to analysis of the visual rhetorics in environmental discourses." — The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

"By making visible just how visual communication plays a powerful role in shaping public opinions about the environment, Morey and Ecosee offer useful concepts and theories to continue studying visual rhetorics related to the environment … This collection particularly encourages us to think about research approaches that go beyond the textual and beyond the social constructionist perspective." — JAC

"The contributors have provided thoughtful, smart essays that initiate a useful discussion for the field." — Stuart C. Brown, coeditor of Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America

Explore SUNY Press's entire environmental studies list for valuable insights and save 30% with code HERITAGE424 through April 30, 2024.