Outstanding Academic Titles 2025: Environmental Studies

Enjoy this week's Outstanding Academic Titles list snippet: Five titles pertaining to Environmental Studies

Posted on April 17, 2026 in Outstanding Academic Titles

Enjoy these five selections from the Choice Reviews 2025 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This week, we highlight Outstanding Academic Titles about Environmental Studies. A hearty congratulations to the winning authors, editors, and publishers!

1. Conservation is not enough: rethinking relationships with water in the arid Southwest
Schipper, Janine. Wyoming, 2025

Schipper (Northern Arizona Univ.) makes a unique and much-needed addition to the literature on water in the American West. Using interview data from a wide range of individuals, she reconstructs “water narratives”: cultural stories we tell ourselves about water. Five chapters and two appendixes give voice to different ways of knowing and relating to water. The water ethos, widely internalized and institutionalized, is conservation, which, Schipper argues, is an impoverished utilitarian understanding that is insufficiently relational to secure human and environmental well-being. After excavating the history and politics of the conservation ideal, Schipper’s major contribution is an interpretation of an Indigenous water ethos that synthesizes deep ecology and Indigenous ways of knowing, calling for treating water as a living being and life-form, which warrants “respect, reverence, and care.” This concise and lucid summary of western water is current and sprinkled with examples, and the later chapters reveal a sophisticated understanding of contemporary ideas in environmental sociology and justice while remaining accessible for undergraduate students. Chapters conclude with a sampling of interview quotes, which adds great value by grounding and humanizing the ideas presented in the text. A must-read volume for our present moment. View on Amazon.

2. Cleaning up the bomb factory: grassroots activism and nuclear waste in the Midwest
Huegel, Casey A. Washington, 2024

Huegel (environmental studies, Univ. of Cincinnati) recounts the fascinating tale of how a small grassroots organization forged unlikely coalitions that brought higher safety standards for nuclear workers and, ultimately, the cleanup of a major nuclear production facility. The book reads like an adventure novel as the reader learns how Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH) brought about the transformation of the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center in rural southwestern Ohio into the Fernald Preserve, a mecca for birdwatchers and hikers. From 1951 to 1989, the sprawling Fernald facility produced nuclear materials for bombs. The FRESH activists, led by working- and lower-middle-class housewives, worked with national environmental groups, antinuclear activists, politicians, regulators, and the unionized workforce at Fernald to raise safety standards and clean up the site. The book demonstrates that a scholar can both observe the highest scholarly standards of citation and documentation and captivate the reader’s attention. Huegel integrates data from scholarly sources, government documents, archives, and interviews. The work is a case study, yet the findings regarding strategies and alliance-building are broadly relevant. The conclusions are nuanced. The book is a classic.  View on Amazon.

3. Sea level: a history
Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von. Chicago, 2024

In another brilliant monograph published by the University of Chicago Press, Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), author of A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and Conflict on the Gran Paradiso1919-1949 and coauthor of Mussolini’s Nature: an Environmental History of Italian Fascism, details the history of sea level. Mean sea level was derived from measurement of “vertical datum” and was not a preexisting, discoverable entity. It emerged from measurement of mean tide-tables compiled in eleventh-century China, of memorial “tsunami-stones'” in Japan from 869 CE, of algal lines on Venetian foundations in the fifteenth century and, by 1675, of high-tide measurements of the ocean on the docks of Amsterdam and other locations adjacent to the sea. The concept was also shaped by attempts to standardize measurements following the French Revolution. What began as a benchmark of human progress, it became a means of promoting and measuring the rise of global capital, trade, and economics, as well as an onus of reform and global responsibility. The book’s concepts may at times challenge some readers, but all adults should read and understand Sea Level. Highly recommended for all adults. View on Amazon.  

4. Plastics in the oceans: toward sustainable solutions
by Jean-Luc Wertz, Olivier Bédué, and Serge Perez CRC Press, 2024

Plastic pollution represents a critical environmental challenge: approximately 200 million tons accumulate in global oceans annually. This comprehensive volume examines plastic pollution across its entire lifecycle, from production through disposal, with particular emphasis on primary plastics and secondary microplastics contributing to marine contamination. The authors provide a thorough inventory of marine plastic sources and their environmental pathways, offering valuable insights into current regulatory frameworks and potential global solutions. The book addresses strategies for combating plastic pollution while exploring innovative alternative materials. The research demonstrates exceptional scientific rigor, supported by extensive bibliographic resources that analyze pollution sources, industrial transformation processes, and the complex fragmentation mechanisms by which plastics degrade in marine environments. The content is well organized and accessibly written, making complex scientific concepts comprehensible without sacrificing technical accuracy. This publication serves as an invaluable resource for readers ranging from undergraduate students to environmental professionals seeking to understand this multifaceted global challenge. The authors’ systematic approach to examining the problem’s scope and potential solutions makes this an essential reference for anyone engaged with contemporary environmental issues and sustainable materials research. View on Amazon.

5. Why ecosystems matter: preserving the key to our survival
Wills, Christopher. Oxford, 2024

This beautifully written work illustrates how modern genetic tools help reveal the diversity in ecosystems. Christopher Wills (emer., Univ. of California, San Diego) cites the work of past geneticists, particularly Theodosius Dobzhansky, to whom this book is dedicated. A fascinating section describes how Dobzhansky collected Drosophila pseudoobscura, a species of fruit flies in the Sierra Nevada foothills outside Yosemite Park. Dobzhansky made slides of the salivary gland cells from the larval stage of the flies, and studied the giant chromosomes of these cells. He correlated his cytological observations with his genetic data. Wills explains how interactions among organisms in an ecosystem promote diversity and complexity in ecosystems by natural selection, expanding on Darwin’s understanding of the power of the ecosystem. Genetic diversity in ecosystems provide resilience in reducing damage from changing environments and mitigates the impact of invasive species. This is a hopeful development because climate change and human encroachment threaten to damage ecosystems. Genetic tools help us understand and protect the living systems on which we depend. This book is a valuable guide for biologists as well as people concerned about the future of our planet.  View on Amazon.

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