New Books in Geography

Deserts,
the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as
inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through
the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US
military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense
establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops
to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To
preserve the country’s status as a superpower after the war, to pave
runways and build bridges, engineers had to understand and then conquer
dunes, permafrost, and even the surface of the moon.

Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments
(University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Gretchen Heefner explores
how the US military generated a new understanding of these environments
and attempted
to master them, intending to cement America’s planetary power.
Operating in these regions depended as much on scientific and cultural
knowledge as on military expertise
and technology. From General George S. Patton learning the hard way
that the desert is not always hot, to the challenges of constructing a
scientific research base under the Arctic ice, to the sheer
implausibility of modeling
Martian environments on Earth, Dr. Heefner takes us on a wry expedition
into the extremes and introduces us to the people who have shaped our
insight into these extraordinary environments. Even decades after the
first manned space flight,
plans for human space exploration and extraplanetary colonization are
still based on what we know about stark habitats on Earth.

An entertaining survey of the relationship between environmental history and military might, Sand, Snow, and Stardust
also serves as a warning about the further transformation of the
planet—whether through desertification, melting ice caps, or attempts to
escape it entirely.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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On August 2, 1943, prisoners at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, located in occupied Poland, launched an uprising against their captors, during which hundreds successfully escaped while guards killed as many in the process. In this groundbreaking work, Chad S.A. Gibbs draws upon recently discovered sources and novel research methods to fundamentally reassess Jewish resistance at Treblinka—both before and during the revolt.

Using the testimonies of revolt survivors, prior escapees, those who passed through the camp, and a handful of bystander witnesses and former SS guards, Gibbs sheds new light on the events of August 2 as well as many prior acts of resistance in Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance (U Wisconsin Press, 2026). Critical to these new interpretations of the revolt are the actions of women prisoners, who here assume a central place in this story for the first time.

Paul Lerner is Chair of the History Department at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He is the author of The Consuming Temple: Jews, Department Stores, and the Consumer Revolution in Germany, 1880–1940. plerner@usc.edu @plerner.bsky.social
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As many as ten thousand people attempt to illegally cross the border
between the US and Mexico each month, braving deserts, rivers, and other
environmental hazards in the process. But the very illegality of that
crossing has an environmental history, writes Penn State University
assistant professor Mary Mendoza in Deadly Divide: How Insects, Pathogens, and People Defied the US-Mexico Border
(University of North Carolina Press, 2026). It was diseases, microbes,
insects, and animals which, in part, hardened the border from a porous
array of landscapes into the militarized zone seen on the news every
night. However, despite the ecological and political difficulties of
doing so, people continue to cross the border between the two countries,
defying environmental odds and risking death along the way. In Deadly Divide,
Mendoza explains why, underscores the risks involved, and shows how we
got to this point, keeping an eye on the border region's stark landscape
with every step of the way.
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The violence that spread across Harlem on the night of March 19, 1935 was the first
large-scale racial disorder in the United States in more than a decade and the first
occurrence in the nation’s leading Black neighborhood. However, as many observers
pointed out, the events were “not a race riot” of the kind that had marked the decades
after the Civil War. Racial violence took a new form in 1935.

Through a granular analysis of those events and the mapping of their locations, Harlem
in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935 (Stanford University Press, 2024) reveals that Harlem’s residents participated in a complex new mix of
violence that was a multifaceted challenge to white economic and political power.
Tracing the legal and government investigations that followed, this project highlights
how that violence came to be distorted, diminished, and marginalized by the concern of
white authorities to maintain the racial order, and by the unwillingness of Harlem's Black
leaders and their white allies to embrace fully such direct forms of protest.

Focused on capturing rather than simplifying the complexity of the new form of racial
violence, Harlem in Disorder is a multi-layered, hyperlinked narrative that connects
different scales of analysis: individual events, aggregated patterns, and a chronological
narrative. Its structure foregrounds individual events to counter how data can
dehumanize the past, and to make transparent the interpretations involved in the
creation of data from uncertain and ambiguous sources.

Harlem in Disorder is an award-winning monograph earning recognition as a Finalist for
the 2026 ACLS Open Access Book Prize, Multimodal Category, sponsored by the
American Council of Learned Societies; winner of the 2025 Ángel David Nieves Book
Award for Best Monograph, sponsored by the American Studies Association Digital
Humanities Caucus; Honorable Mention for the 2025 Mary L. Dudziak Digital Legal
History Prize, sponsored by the American Society for Legal History, and Honorable
Mention for the 2025 Open Scholarship Award, sponsored by the Canadian Social
Knowledge Institute.

Kishauna Soljour is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State
University. Her most recent writing appears in the edited collection: From Rights to
Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.
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Participation in official governmental institutions and activities
has declined dramatically. Americans are less inclined to express trust
in, or cooperate with, political leaders and each other to address
society's most pressing problems. In Neighborhoods Matter: How Place and People Affect Political Participation (NYU
Press, 2026), Carrie LeVan explores this growing crisis in civic
engagement, arguing that where we live—and the people who live around
us—may be to blame.

Drawing on national surveys, census data, and spatial analysis, LeVan demonstrates how neighborhood design can dramatically impact political participation, including people's desire and ability to vote in local, state, and national elections. She argues that the suburbs, which isolate residents, require driving, and are zoned for single-use, do not provide an effective infrastructure for civic engagement. However, cities, which are often designed to be walkable, more interactive, and are zoned for mixed-use, provide a supportive environment where people and politics can thrive.

Ultimately, LeVan underscores how neighborhoods that support interaction, competition, collective action—and even conflict—can support greater civic engagement and political participation. Neighborhoods Matter highlights the connection between politics, people, and place, calling for good suburban and urban design that can support a vibrant and engaging civic life.
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