“Nature has been narrated as dangerous, backward, salvific, and endangered. Urban Narratives about Nature: Socio-Ecological Imaginaries between Science and Entertainment looks to cities for the mechanisms of production, development, and circulation nodes of some of these narratives. Through carefully chosen and researched cases studies, mostly located in twentieth-century Spain and Great Britain, the chapters in this edited volume compellingly show the transnational networks of media, experts, businesses, and activists that re-imagined non-urban landscapes from cities. From these studies, cities themselves emerge as contested spaces with porous walls traversed, often in unexpected ways, by the very natural entities that urban dwellers sought to tame through their storytelling.”

Lino Camprubí, University of Seville

This is an eclectic and original collection exploring how the many entanglements between cities, their inhabitants, and the rural and wild worlds helped shape notions of modernity. It will make a valuable addition to the bookshelves of scholars working in urban history, environmental history, history of science, more-than-human studies, and media studies. The geographical emphasis of many contributors makes an important contribution to the growing body of Anglophone literature on science and nature in twentieth-century Spain.

Sarah Hamilton, University of Bergen