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Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran, c. 1876-1877, oil on canvas

Silent Spring Revolution, a Conversation with Douglas Brinkley

… there's so much, but I am sure that clean air and clean water contributed to all of our, our needs. And it's what … he ended up buying a resort for people with polio, thermal waters in Warm Streams, Georgia, where he could be with … for the first time was talking about clean air and clean water and if I thought I'd begin with '60. My early …

How Public and Private Enterprise Have Built American Infrastructure

… th -century spending spree on America’s highways, railways, waterways and harbors, and airlines, expenditures dropped … both wired and wireless), and municipal infrastructures (water, sanitation, schools, and trash disposal). In fact, … in city services, such as streetcars, electric grids, and water and wastewater systems. These not only made money for …
President George W. Bush and his wife Laura listening to a Missouri elementary student read aloud to them.

Can Bush Avoid the Curse of Re-election?

… But he overstepped by authorizing the coverup of the Watergate scandal and paying hush money to Watergate defendants. These were criminal acts exposed first … investigation that led to his resignation from office. “Watergate” was simply the culmination of Nixon’s …
Vaccination team member giving a cholera vaccine in Cerca Carvajal, 2013.

Cholera and the Roots of Public Health

… in the construction and maintenance of proper drainage and water supply systems in order properly to remove waste and … neighborhood residents who became ill all received their water from the same water pump: the Broad Street pump. Removing the handle of …
Minaret Islam Khoja in Khiva

A Postcard from Khiva, Uzbekistan

… the fast-moving rail cars. The river is still bloated with water that days earlier had been snow, melting from the … border with Afghanistan . Irrigation canals draw so much water from both rivers that the Aral Sea, historically one of the largest inland bodies of water in the world, has all but disappeared. This is the …
fire at plant in Bhopal in background people lost in the fire

Remembering Bhopal: The World's Worst Industrial Disaster

… problems caused by the gas leak and subsequent soil and water contamination.  Now, one of the things that we always … it was caused because, you know, a disgruntled worker let water into this tank, which contained methyl isocyanate, … damages around that area, going into the, you know, groundwater, into the soil, into the bodies of people who live …

American Presidential Scandals

… and more closely fought. The intended site of the Whitewater Development Corporation along the Whitewater River in Arkansas. The investigative dominos that … While governor of Arkansas, Clinton invested in the Whitewater Development Corporation , a local real estate project …

Humans Have Always Lived in a World of Many Worlds

… son of Pelops and the nymph Axioche, and Zeuxo, a water nymph and the daughter of Oceanus, ca. 490 BCE … all their descendants ever since with her soils, crops, waters, and other miraculous gifts. In return, the Athenians … inanimate, since all things are alive, including stones, water, air, and stars. Hence, there is no such thing in this …
U.S. National Archives building

New Laws Needed to Stop Bullying of National Archives

… tried to open some segments of his conversations about Watergate, a President may hide his role in deletions. Nixon … lawyer a list of 70 items for potential deletion from Watergate tapes. Archivists who protested Nixon’s backdoor … revealed Nixon’s role in deletions when it had opened some Watergate tapes. The historian’s lawyer painted a gloomier …
Exterior view of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India,

The Bhopal Chemical Gas Disaster

… problems caused by the gas leak and subsequent soil and water contamination.   Bhopal was not an accident. It was a … from the abandoned factory have seeped into the soil, water, and bodies of people living around the factory.  … of the factory site, surrounding land and groundwater. Levels of mercury in some places were 6,000,000 times …
An abandoned building in Chernobyl

A Postcard from Chernobyl

… core, which had melted, from contaminating the ground water. Twenty years after the disaster, it was revealed that … the 1980s. The faded Soviet posters and slogans, the fizzy water vending machines, and the school text books all … wall (left, photo by Voicu Sucala) , and rusty fizzy water vending machines (right, photo by Nadia French). An …
Glacial melt from Myrdalsjökull glacier in the south (jökull means glacier in Icelandic). Note the alluvial cones formed by volcanic ash and sediment.

A Postcard from Reykjavik: Iceland’s Volcanic History

… for weeks. Skógafoss, near Eyjafjallajökull, is one of many waterfalls seen from the Ring Road; Iceland's Ring Road, … And while glacial melt sustains the incredible array of waterfalls seen all along Iceland’s picturesque Ring Road …
Palestinians during the first intifada, 1987. (Photo by Peter Stepan)

The Long Shadow of the June 1967 War

… by the 1940s warfare, control of the precious fresh water of t he Jordan River , international trade, and other … The leaders of Israel threatened to use force to reopen the waterway and otherwise deal with Egyptian threats. On June … the Israeli assault on Egypt. The war would prove to be a watershed in Arab politics by discrediting secular …
Official portrait of President Gerald R. Ford (February 25, 1976).

Will Vindication Elude Ford?

… was a Herculean task. The nation was deeply scarred by the Watergate scandal, and Americans’ faith in the presidency … any further. Beyond his role in healing the damage from the Watergate scandal, Ford was also a model of moderate, … much, much worse than Gerald Ford in the dark days after Watergate. Christopher Bates is an adjunct professor of …
Ruins of Chorrillos after the battle of January 13, 1881. Photograph by Eugene Courret. Glass Plate. National Library of Peru Collection.

The War of the Pacific and the Fate of South America

… “ rabonas ” (allied forces) played a key role, delivering water, food, and ammunition, aiding the wounded, and even … and Argentina are among the largest in the world.  The water-intensive extraction of lithium depletes water resources in an already water stressed area, resulting …
Cover of The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction by Max Page.

The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction

Review of The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction, by Max Page (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)
… similarities across time and genre.  Destruction by fire, water, foreigner, and plague have remarkable resiliency, as … explosion. Would nature triumph over humans and bring a watery, fiery, catastrophic demise?  Certainly, there are … New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Destruction by water in 1909 was motivated by concerns of urban land …
Refugee tents in Piraeus port.

A Postcard from a Piraeus Refugee Camp

… of tents, without heating or plumbing. The only source of water came from a single hose, which ran through a hole in … we worked there, manning the hose, using it to fill the water coolers from which we served water and weak tea to a procession of refugees from Stone …
The Favorites of Emperor Honorius by John William Waterhouse depicts the emperor's court in the 5th century CE.

Financing Salvation in Late Antiquity

Review of The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity, by Peter Brown (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015.)
… The Favorites of Emperor Honorius by John William Waterhouse depicts the emperor's court in the 5th century …
A crowd of Syrian refugees in the Vienna airport

Road to Europe: The 2015 Migration Crisis

… Locals are divided; while some greet the refugees with water, blankets, and toys, others utter ugly words, … some greet the migrants, or in many cases, refugees, with water, blankets and toys, others yell ugly words, point to …
President Richard Nixon in 1969.

The Broken Scandal-Reform Cycle

… Ever since Watergate, campaign finance reformers have come to expect … books today were enacted in response to just two scandals: Watergate in the 1970s and an earlier scandal in Theodore … hasn’t it?  Because the disclosure requirement in the post-Watergate reforms eliminated the crucial factor in the …
Cartoon from Puck: The Bosses of the Senate

Buying American Elections?

… politics. While some think these two should be like oil and water, the simple fact is they’re not. And in the wake of … century robber barons. I think of Nixon's dirty tricks and Watergate. Those are the first things that come to mind.   …
A traditional glass of Weissbier

Keeping Beer “Pure”: The 1516 Reinheitsgebot

… the law as a sign of centuries of quality and tradition. Water, barley ( left ) and hops ( right ) are the acceptable … the acceptable ingredients in beer to “barley, hops, and water.” At the time, a growing taste for the pale and crisp …
electrical towers

Energy, Deregulation and Prosperity

… prosperity and even that of the rest of the nation. Waterpower and animal power sustained California during the … out of its energy dilemma and transformed its future. Waterpower once used for gold mining was harnessed to turn …

Energy Policy and the Long Transition in America

… the founding of the country in the 18th century (wood and water for heating and small-scale manufacturing), to the 19th and early 20th centuries (coal and water for steam engines and electric generators for … exerted political pressure to clean up America's air, water, and land, which had been despoiled by the …