Environmentalism

Ramachandra Guha's many books include a pioneering work of environmental history (The Unquiet Woods, 1989), an award-winning social history of sport (A Corner of a Foreign Field, 2002), and a widely acclaimed and bestselling work of contemporary history (India after Gandhi, 2007). The first volume of his landmark biography of Gandhi, Gandhi before India, was published in 2013; the second and concluding volume will be published in early 2018.
Guha's awards include the R.K. Narayan Prize, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Ramnath Goenka Award and the Padma Bhushan. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in the humanities by Yale University, and in 2015, he won the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian culture and scholarship.

In this book Ramachandra Guha, an acclaimed historian of the environment, draws on many
years of research in three continents. He details the major trends, ideas, campaigns and
thinkers within the environmental movement worldwide. Among the thinkers he profiles are
John Muir, Mahatma Gandhi, Rachel Carson, and Octavia Hill; among the movements, the
Chipko Andolan and the German Greens. Environmentalism: A Global History documents
the flow of ideas across cultures, the ways in which the environmental movement in one
country has been invigorated or transformed by infusions from outside. It interprets the
different directions taken by different national traditions, and also explains why in certain
contexts (such as the former Socialist Bloc) the green movement is marked only by
its absence.
Massive in scope but pointed in analysis, written with passion and verve, this book
presents a comprehensive account of a significant social movement of our times,
and will be of wide interest both within and outside the academy. For this new edition,
the author has added a fresh prologue linking the book's themes to ongoing
debates about the environmental impacts of global economic development.