This is an unmatched book that opens up the environmental histories of various modern countries from the eighteenth century to the present. Both an intellectual history of how people have thought about their environments and a material history of how they have lived with them, the empirical stories offered here reveal an enormous amount about Central and Southeastern Europe and offer environmental historians of other places and times new ideas for thinking about the role of nature in history and the role of history in nature. This study is an important contribution to global environmental history.

Alan Mikhail, Yale University

While concentrating on environmental issues in East-Central and South-East Europe from a modern historical viewpoint, this book is a unique collection of essays that fill a considerable gap in the discussions of the history of environmentalism in Europe. These studies provide thought-provoking inside views into the development of environmental thought, particularly related to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with cases extending back to as early as the eighteenth century. They cover a wide spatial and thematic range of topics: among the areas studied are Austria, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy, Turkey, and beyond, and thematic overviews in such fields as technology and environmentalism, environmental protection, religion and ecology, national parks, and forest sustainability are included. This collection is an essential work of the history of European or global environmentalism.

Andrea Kiss, Vienna University of Technology

Finally, a comprehensive volume that uncovers the histories of environmentalism in countries that have been mostly left out from Anglophone accounts. From Croatia to Greece, Turkey to Slovenia, the authors of this collection shed light on the multiplicity of environmentalist experiences in those countries, connecting them to the diverse cultural, religious, and political contexts. This study is a crucial contribution to a more inclusive global history of environmentalism.

Marco Armiero, Icrea Research Professor, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain

The collection combines scholarship about both sides of the former Iron Curtain, still so persistent in many minds. It should and will inspire further research, including work by the younger generation of environmental historians working under increasingly difficult circumstances.

Verena Winiwarter, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt