2022
Nature’s Crossroads: The Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota, eds. George Vrtis and Christopher W. Wells (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022). Minnesota’s Twin Cities have long been powerful engines of environmental change. This book features an interdisciplinary team of distinguished scholars who aim to open new conversations about the environmental history of the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota. Nature’s Crossroads website.
2018
Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018). This edited collection presents a variety of primary sources from the postwar environmental justice movement, highlighting the sometimes tense relationship between environmentalism and social justice. Environmental Justice in Postwar America website.
2012
Car Country (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012).
For most people in the United States, going almost anywhere begins with reaching for the car keys. Car Country tells the story of how car dependency became woven into the basic fabric of the American landscape. Car Country website.
2022
“Unearthing Nature’s Crossroads: An Introduction,” and “A Tale of Two Waterfronts: Commerce, Industry, and the Environmental Transformation of Minnesota’s Twin Cities,” (both with George Vrtis) in Nature’s Crossroads: The Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota, eds. George Vrtis and Christopher W. Wells (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022).
2020
“A War of Mobility: Transportation, American Productive Power, and the Environment during World War II,” in Nature at War: American Environments and World War II, eds. Thomas Robertson, Richard P. Tucker, Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Peter Mansoor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Co-authored with Thomas Robertson.
2014
“Reading Signs: The Landscape as Text,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 1 (Fall 2014).
2014
“Rebuilding the City, Leaving It Behind: Transportation and the Environmental Crisis in Turn-of-the-Century American Cities,” Journal of Transport History 35 (December 2014), 183-99.
2014
“Green Cities, the Search for Sustainability, and Urban Environmental History,” Journal of Urban History 40 (May 2014): 613-20.
2012
“The Campus as a Teaching Tool: A Case Study of Macalester College’s EcoHouse,” in Sustainable Development at Universities: New Horizons, ed. Walter Leal (Frankfurt: Peter Lang Scientific Publishers, 2012), 479-92. Co-authored with Suzanne Savanick Hansen.
2012
“Fueling the Boom: Gasoline Taxes, Invisibility, and the Growth of the American Highway Infrastructure, 1919-1956,” Journal of American History 99 (June 2012): 72-81.
[Selected as an “Editor’s Choice” article.]
2012
“From Freeway to Parkway: Federal Law, Grassroots Environmental Protest, and the Evolving Design of Interstate-35E in Saint Paul, Minnesota,” Journal of Planning History 11 (Feb 2012): 8-26.
2009
“La Morte del Modello T: Strade Pavimentate, Auto Coperte e Tecnologica Desueta” [The Death of the Model T: Smooth Roads, Closed Cars, and Technological Maladaptation], I Frutti di Demetra: Bollettino di Storia e Ambiente [The Fruits of Demeter: A Bulletin of History and the Environment] 21 (2009): 63-75. English translation available.
2009
“Using a Class to Conduct a Carbon Inventory: A Case Study with Practical Results at Macalester College,” International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 10 (July 2009): 228-238. Co-authored with Suzanne Savanick and Christie Manning.
2008
“Motorists, Engineer-Administrators, and Muddy-Boots Contractors: New Perspectives on the American Highway Revolution,” Reviews in American History 36 (Dec. 2008): 586-593.
2007
“The Road to the Model T: Culture, Road Conditions, and Innovation at the Dawn of the American Motor Age,” Technology and Culture 48 (July 2007): 497-523.
[Winner: Levinson Prize, Society for the History of Technology]
2006
“The Changing Nature of Country Roads: Farmers, Reformers, and the Shifting Uses of Rural Space, 1880-1905,” Agricultural History 80 (Spring 2006): 143-166.
(No peer review)
2015
Minnesota Environments. A website fully optimized for use on a mobile device that lets you explore Minnesota’s environmental history from your smartphone, tablet, or computer. Developed with George Vrtis (Carleton College) and in collaboration with many generous and insightful colleagues and students at Carleton, Macalester, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Minnesota Historical and Cultural Grants Program.
2012
Twin Cities Environmental History: A Bibliography of Published and Unpublished Sources (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2012). Co-edited with George Vrtis.
2008
“Response to Donald E. Worster, ‘On John Muir’s Trail,’” Macalester Civic Forum 2 (Summer 2008): 15-21.
2012
“History Topic: Twin Cities Environmental History,” Minnesota Historical Society website. Co-authored with George Vrtis.
Review of Ben Bradley, British Columbia by the Road: Car Culture and the Making of a Modern Landscape (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017), Canadian Historical Review, January 2020.
Review of Brinda Sarathy, Vivien Hamilton, and Janet Farrell Brodie, eds., Inevitably Toxic: Historical Perspectives on Contamination, Exposure, and Expertise (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), Environmental History, January 2020.
Review of Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2015), Business History Review, Spring 2016.
Review of Matthew T. Huber, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), Journal of Historical Geography, January 2016.
Review of Christopher Morris, The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), The Historian, Winter 2014.
Review of Bernhard Rieger, The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), Journal of American History, March 2014.
Review of Joseph F. C. DiMento and Cliff Ellis, Changing Lanes: Visions and Histories of Urban Freeways (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013), Environmental History, January 2014.
Review of Alexis Madrigal, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2011), Environmental History, January 2012.
Web Site Review of American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/ecology/index.html (created and maintained by the Library of Congress), Journal of American History, December 2011.
Review of Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (New York : Metropolitan Books, 2009), Michigan Historical Review, Fall 2011.
Review of Cotten Seiler, Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), Technology and Culture, January 2010.
Review of David N. Lucsko, The Business of Speed: The Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915-1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), Journal of American History, December 2009.
Review of David Blanke, Hell on Wheels: The Promise and Peril of America’s Car Culture, 1900-1940 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), Journal of American History, March 2008.
Review of Sally H. Clarke, Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Technology and Culture, January 2008.
Review of Mark H. Rose, Bruce E. Seely, and Paul F. Barrett, The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century, H-Urban, H-Net Reviews, April 2007.
Review of Kathleen Franz, Tinkering: Consumers Reinvent the Early Automobile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), History: Reviews of New Books, Summer 2005.
Review of Peter Derrick, Tunneling to the Future: The Story of the Great Subway Expansion That Saved New York (New York: New York University Press, 2001), Technology and Culture, October 2002.
Review of David Blanke, Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Summer 2002 supplement.
In Hugh Slotten, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)
1. “Household Technology”
2. “Motor Vehicles” (co-authored with Clay McShane)
3. “Internal Combustion Engine”
In Melvyn Dubofsky, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
4. “Automotive Industry”
In Gary B. Nash, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, Volume 9, Postwar United States: 1946-1968, Allan Winkler (New York: Facts on File, 2003)
5. “Environmental Movement,” 101-02
6. “Baby Boom,” 29-30
In Stanley Kutler, ed., The Dictionary of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003)
7. “Automobile” (co-authored with James J. Flink), 366-70
8. “Trucking Industry” (co-authored with Don H. Berkebile), 230-31
In Mary Kupiec Cayton and Peter Williams, eds., Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001), Volume I
9. “Chronology of Cultural and Intellectual Events,” xxix-lxxvi
In Paul Boyer, ed., The Oxford Companion to United States History (New York: Oxford University Press,2001)
10. “Automobile Industry,” 56-57 12. “John James Audubon,” 55
11. “Household Technology,” 348-49 13. “Courtship and Dating,” 164-65
In Tom and Sara Pendergast, eds., St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (New York: St. James Press, 2000)
14. “Automobiles,” 137-42
15. “Bicycling,” 245-46
16. “Sunday Driving,” 578-79
In Derek Jones, ed., Censorship: A World Encyclopedia (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000)
17. “Negro World,” 1686-87
18. “The Hypocrisy of the U.S. and Her Allies,” 1132-33
Christopher W. Wells
Department of Environmental Studies
Macalester College
1600 Grand Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55105
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