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About Brian Hamilton

Brian Hamilton is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he is researching African American environmental history. A Maine native, he lives in Western Massachusetts and chairs the History and Social Science Department at Deerfield Academy.

Brian Hamilton is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he is researching African American environmental history. A Maine native, he lives in Western Massachusetts and chairs the History and Social Science Department at Deerfield Academy.

Brian's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Brian:

Environmental Studies May 23, 2023

Sea Change

An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean

Christina Gerhardt

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Atlases are being redrawn as islands are disappearing. What does an island see when the sea rises? Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean (U California Press …
Environmental Studies May 9, 2023

Paved Paradise

How Parking Explains the World

Henry Grabar

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don't …
Environmental Studies April 25, 2023

Our Lives in Their Portfolios

Why Asset Managers Own the World

Brett Christophers

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don't just …
Environmental Studies April 11, 2023

Carbon Sovereignty

Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation

Andrew Curley

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
For almost fifty years, coal dominated the Navajo economy. But in 2019 one of the Navajo Nation’s largest coal plants closed.This comprehensive new work offers a deep dive into the …
Environmental Studies April 5, 2023

Uncertain Climes

Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America

Joseph Giacomelli

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Even people who still refuse to accept the reality of human-induced climate change would have to agree that the topic has become inescapable in the United States in recent decades …
Environmental Studies February 20, 2023

US History in 15 Foods

Anna Zeide

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key moments in …
Environmental Studies February 14, 2023

Palo Alto

A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

Malcolm Harris

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with high technology and big finance to produce …
Environmental Studies November 22, 2022

Hurricane Jim Crow

How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South

Caroline Grego

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. But the devastating storm is only the beginning of …
Environmental Studies October 19, 2022

Dangerous Ground

Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy

John Suval

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
The squatter—defined by Noah Webster as "one that settles on new land without a title"—had long been a fixture of America's frontier past. In the antebellum period, white squatters propelled …
Environmental Studies September 20, 2022

Cannibal Capitalism

How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It

Nancy Fraser

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In Cannibal …
Environmental Studies September 20, 2022

Agrotopias

An American Literary History of Sustainability

Abby L. Goode

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
In Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability (UNC Press, 2022), Abby L. Goode reveals the foundations of American environmentalism and its enduring connections to racism, eugenics, and agrarian ideals …
Environmental Studies August 23, 2022

Owning the Future

Power and Property in an Age of Crisis

Mathew Lawrence and Adrienne Buller

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Adrienne Buller (The Value of a Whale) and Mathew Lawrence (Planet on Fire) have penned a radical manifesto for the transformation of post-pandemic politics: Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of …
Environmental Studies July 12, 2022

Scars on the Land

An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South

David Silkenat

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By …
Environmental Studies May 3, 2022

The Long Land War

The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights

Jo Guldi

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Jo Guldi tells the story of a global struggle to bring food, water, and shelter to all. Land is shown to be a central motor of politics in the twentieth …
Environmental Studies March 1, 2022

Saving Yellowstone

Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America

Megan Kate Nelson

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
From historian and critically acclaimed author of The Three-Cornered War comes the propulsive and vividly told story of how Yellowstone became the world’s first national park amid the nationwide turmoil …
Environmental Studies November 2, 2021

Empire of Rubber

Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia

Gregg Mitman

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s rubber grew under …
Environmental Studies August 31, 2021

Public Citizens

The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism

Paul Sabin

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
In the 1960s and 1970s, an insurgent attack on traditional liberalism took shape in America. It was built on new ideals of citizen advocacy and the public interest. Environmentalists, social …
Environmental Studies August 17, 2021

Acquired Tastes

Stories about the Origins of Modern Food

Benjamin R. Cohen, Michael S. Kideckel and Anna Zeide

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
The modern way of eating—our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised—has its roots as far back as the 1870s. Many food writers trace our eating habits to …
Environmental Studies July 5, 2021

Stop Saving the Planet!

An Environmentalist Manifesto

Jenny Price

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
We’ve been ​“saving the planet” for decades…and environmental crises just get worse. All this Tesla driving and LEED building and carbon trading seems to accomplish little to nothing — all …
Environmental Studies June 16, 2021

A Prison in the Woods

Environment and Incarceration in New York's North Country

Clarence Jefferson Hall

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Since the mid-nineteenth century, Americans have known the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York as a site of industrial production, a place to heal from disease, and a sprawling outdoor …
Environmental Studies September 24, 2020

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal

The Political Economy of Saving the Planet

Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
In Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (Verso Books, 2020), Noam Chomsky, the world’s leading public intellectual, and Robert Pollin, the …
Environmental Studies September 8, 2020

One Billion Americans

The Case for Thinking Bigger

Matthew Yglesias

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
What would actually make America great? More people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means …
Environmental Studies August 20, 2020

Mill Town

Reckoning with What Remains

Kerri Arsenault

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations …
Environmental Studies August 11, 2020

The Nature of the Future

Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North

Emily Pawley

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
The nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically separating them from markets, capitalism, and urban influences. The …