Fall/Winter 2025
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Island Press launched the Urban Resilience Project in 2013 to address urban resilience in climate change. In 2024, it has evolved into the Island Press Short-form Program, supporting all authors with short-form content. The program offers
and marketing assistance, helping authors reach new audiences and formats. Participation is optional but beneficial.
Nature/Environmental Conservation & Protection September 2025.
Hardcover | $32.00 | 978-1-64283-363-8
E-book | $31.99 | 978-1-64283-364-5
252 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Priyanka Kumar
Light Between Apple Trees
Rediscovering the Wild Through a Beloved American Fruit
From Himalayan orchards to wild American groves: a delicious, transformative quest for nature's forgotten fruit.
As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit–especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree–and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild?
In The Light Between Apple Trees , Kumar takes us on a dazzling and transformative journey to rediscover apples, brilliantly weaving together science and childhood memories with the apple's storied history.
The Light Between Apple Trees is a lyric odyssey that will forever change how you look at an "apple a day." Kumar shows how–if we follow untamed paths–the tang and texture of an apple can lead us back to the wild.
Of related interest
White Pine
John Pastor
A Good Drink
Shanna Farrell
Priyanka Kumar is the author of Conversations with Birds, widely acclaimed as "a landmark book" that "could help people around the world rewild their hearts and souls" (Psychology Today). Kumar's essays appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion, and Sierra magazine. She has been featured on CBS News Radio, Yale Climate Connections, and Oprah Daily, and her awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, an ICJS Fellowship, a New Mexico/New Visions Governor's Award, an Aldo Leopold residency, a Canada Council for the Arts Grant, and an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Fellowship. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She wrote, directed, and produced the feature documentary The Song of the Little Road, starring Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar, which premiered at Telluride and is in the permanent collection of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Kumar taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California, and serves on the Advisory Council of the Leopold Writing Program. She completed a Climate Master certification in 2025.
Author's residence: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Ryan Mitchell
Living Off Grid
50 Steps to Unplug, Become Self-Sufficient, and Build the Homestead of Your Dreams
City dweller or country dreamer–here's how anyone can start moving yoward a sustainable lifestyle.
Ryan Mitchell never thought he would go off the grid. Yet this selfdescribed desk-jockey with no carpentry skills today lives on 11 acres in a house he designed and powers with solar, gets his water from a well, has a composting toilet and septic system, eats from his garden, raises baby quail, and runs his own business. His bills are a fraction of what they were when he paid rent and utilities, and he has infinitely more free time to pursue the things he loves.
If you've ever dreamed of this lifestyle, Living Off Grid will help you navigate the most important decisions you'll need to make to create the reality that's right for you. Whether you're an urbanite who just wants to save some money (and carbon) with small solar arrays or you're ready to purchase land or you've already taken the plunge and want a better way to deal with your wastewater, Ryan has done the hard work to set you up for success.
House & Home/Sustainable Living September 2025.
Paperback | $25.00 | 978-1-64283-359-1 E-book | $24.99 | 978-1-64283-360-7
232 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Living on 11 acres in a homestead powered by solar, Ryan Mitchell has helped countless people simplify their lives and go off grid. As the bestselling author of Tiny House Living: Ideas for Building and Living Well in Less than 400 Square Feet, he's been featured in the New York Times, BBC, Associated Press, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Mother Earth News, Treehugger, and NPR.
Author's residence: Rock Hill, South Carolina
Of related interest
A Northern Gardener’s Guide to Native Plants and Pollinators
Lorraine Johnson and Sheila Colla
The Good Garden Chris McLaughlin
Ryan Dennis Barn Gothic
Three Generations and the Death of the Family Dairy Farm
Beautifully Written, Deeply Moving— Barn Gothic Reveals the Human Cost of Losing America's Family Farms.
When Ryan Dennis’s father was crushed by heavy machinery on their New York dairy farm, both men accepted the accident as a risk of agricultural life. But it was harder to comprehend being crushed by low milk prices, big banks, and the policies that destroyed America’s family farms.
Even though Ryan grew up watching his father and grandfather struggle to survive, he always thought he would follow in their footsteps and take over the family farm. But as he milked cows and fed calves, the world outside the barn was changing. Between 2003 and 2020, 40,000 dairy farms went out of business in the United States.
Nature/Environmental Conservation & Protection
November 2025.
Hardcover | $30.00 | 978-1-64283-447-5
E-book | $29.99 | 978-1-64283-448-2
272 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Barn Gothic is an elegy for family farmers and an intimate portrait of three generations laboring to be fathers and sons while their livelihood falls apart. Beautifully told with a farmer’s restraint and a poet’s grace, it is a story of personal loss amid corporate corruption and of finding a way forward when everything you know disappears.
Of related interest
the Farm
Grain by Grain
Bob Quinn and Liz Carlisle
Ryan Dennis grew up on a New York dairy farm. Since 2011, he has written the column “The Milk House,” which appears in print agricultural journals in four countries, including Progressive Dairy and Farm and Livestock Directory in the United States. His debut novel, The Beasts They Turned Away, was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.
Author's residence: Arkport, New York
Bet
Beth Hoffman
Nancy Castaldo Squirrel
How a Backyard Forager Shapes Our World
Love them or hate them–what if squirrels are actually the key to understanding our planet's future?
Squirrels are a common sight, seemingly everywhere in wild and urban nature. Their chattering antics in city parks delight us while their raids on our backyard gardens and birdfeeders never fail to exasperate. But squirrels are more than amusing backyard entertainers, and few of us know much about them or fully appreciate their role in keeping the environment healthy. As stress on the natural world intensifies, should we be paying more attention to the plight of squirrels?
In Squirrel , Nancy Castaldo shines new light on this familiar backyard mammal, exploring their staggering diversity (they're found on all continents but Antarctica) and the many surprising ways they shape our world, our communities, and our cultures. Squirrel is accessible and entertaining, perfect for anyone who has felt exasperation, curiosity, and kinship with our bushy-tailed rodent neighbors.
Nature/Animals/Wildlife
September 2025.
Hardcover | $30.00 | 978-1-64283-375-1 E-book | $29.99 | 978-1-64283-376-8
240 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Nancy Castaldo is a naturalist, environmental educator, and the author of more than two dozen books for young readers. Her books have garnered starred reviews, the Eureka Award for Nonfiction, the Green Earth Book Award, and Sigurd F. Olsen Nature Writing honors, among others. Nancy has also authored articles about nature for a variety of print and online publications. She is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and on the International Wildlife Coexistence Network Council. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and rescued Bichon.
Author's residence: Chatham, New York
Of related interest
Vaquita
Brooke Bessesen
What a Bee Knows
Stephen Buchmann
Transportation/Public Transportation September 2025.
Hardcover | $35.00 | 978-1-64283-365-2
E-book | $34.99 | 978-1-64283-366-9
244 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
New York’s Secret Subway
The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit
Explore an astonishing feat of engineering–and the political intrigue that nearly nuried it forever.
In the nineteenth century, Manhattan's streets were so choked with pedestrians, horses, vehicles, and vendors that a trip from City Hall to Central Park could take hours. Alfred Beach had the perfect solution: build a giant pneumatic tube underneath Broadway from the Battery to Harlem.
New York's Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit tells a classic story of good versus evil, pitting the mild-mannered Beach, a visionary inventor and entrepreneur, against the oafish tyrant Boss Tweed, the exemplar of corruption in the Gilded Age. It also tells the story of one of the most astonishing feats of engineering in American history, the surreptitious creation of the nation's first operational subway.
Richly illustrated and populated with larger-than-life characters, New York's Secret Subway will captivate readers and provide historical context for today's clashes between public interests and powerful business and political groups. Algeo tells this amazing true story in full for the first time, and although it took place more than a century ago, it will at times sound surprisingly familiar.
Of related interest
Trains, Buses, People, Second Edition Christof Spieler
New Mobilities Todd Litman
Matthew Algeo is an award-winning journalist and author. He has reported from four continents for NPR News and written for major publications including the Atlantic, New York Times, and Washington Post. He is the author of seven books, including Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip, which Christopher Buckley called "utterly likable," and the Washington Post named one of the best books of the year.
Author's residence: New York, New York
Tara Lohan
Undammed
Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life
Our future depends on flowing rivers. Explore the powerful movement that could save our waterways and ourselves.
Free-flowing rivers in the United States are an endangered species. We've dammed and diverted almost every major river, straightening curves and blocking passage for fish and other aquatic animals, pushing many to the brink. Now a heartening new movement is helping to demolish harmful or obsolete structures, restoring new life to rivers and communities that depend on them. In doing so, it offers a pathway to undoing environmental harm to nature–and to ourselves.
In Undammed , environmental journalist Tara Lohan makes a case for the unexpected benefits of dam removal. By restoring rivers, she argues, we're protecting our own communities by increasing climate resilience, improving water quality, enhancing public safety, and boosting fish populations that feed people and restore rights fo r Native American Tribes. Undammed is an inspirational look at our changing relationship with the natural world, showing the cascade of benefits that come when we no longer turn our backs on rivers.
Nature/Environmental Conservation & Protection October 2025.
Hardcover | $32.00 | 978-1-64283-334-8 E-book | $31.99 | 978-1-64283-335-5
288 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Tara Lohan is an environmental journalist who has been writing about the confluence of water, energy, and biodiversity for nearly two decades. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect, Grist, Salon, High Country News, and The Revelator. She's the editor of two books on the global water crisis, Water Matters and Water Consciousness. She holds a master's degree in literary nonfiction and lives in Bend, Oregon.
Author's residence: Bend, Oregon
Of related interest
for
Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River
R. Edward Grumbine
Water is
Fighting Over John Fleck
Nature/Ecosystems & Habitats/Forests & Rainforests
October 2025.
Hardcover | $30.00 | 978-1-64283-342-3
E-book | $29.99 | 978-1-64283-343-0 228 pages. | 5 x 8
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Gary Ferguson
Twilight Forest
An Elegy for Ponderosa in a Changing West
A life-affirming journey through one of America's most cherished wild landscapes
Ponderosa pine has long been a charismatic icon of the American West–yet a quiet unraveling has begun. In the past decade, in a vast area from Santa Fe to the Sierras, more than two hundred million ponderosa have died. While some will survive in cooler places, scientists estimate that by mid-century, less than five percent of the ponderosa in the American Southwest may remain. As the very character of this vast region shifts, what will be left behind? In The Twilight Forest , Gary Ferguson brings readers on an expansive journey through the ponderosa forests of the Southwest both to mourn–and to celebrate–the forests that nurtured him. The result is a life-a ffirming tribute to one of America's most cherished wild landscapes and a reminder that loss can be a pathway to connection.
Of related interest
White Pine
John Pastor
Forests for the People
Christopher Johnson and David Govatski
Award-winning author Gary Ferguson has written for a variety of national publications, including Vanity Fair and Outside, and is the author of twenty-seven books on nature and science. His memoir The Carry Home, which the Los Angeles Times called "gorgeous, with beauty on every page," was awarded "Best Nature Book of the Year" by the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Hawks Rest–described as "dazzling" by The San Francisco Chronicle–was the first title to win the Best Book award from both the Mountains and Plains and the Pacific Northwest booksellers associations. Decade of the Wolf, meanwhile, written with Yellowstone wolf project director Doug Smith, was Montana Book of the Year. Gary's 2016 article "A Deeper Boom," for Orion magazine, was chosen "Best Essay of the Year" by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Gary is a frequent keynote speaker on a variety of conservation issues, as well as a former member of the National Geographic Lecture Series.
Author's residence: Tucson, Arizona
Benjamin Schneider
Unfinished Metropolis
Igniting the City-Building Revolution
Why are our cities still built for the 1970s? Uncover the surprising truth about urban design and how to fix it.
In The Unfinished Metropolis , Benjamin Schneider explores why America's favorite things to build–freeways, single-family homes, malls, and downtown office towers–are keeping us stuck in the past. We deserve cities where housing is abundant, public transit is fast and seamless, and streets are for more than car storage. To accomplish this, we need to free ourselves from these outdated forms so we can experiment with new types of housing, new uses for streets, and new purposes for downtowns. We need to embrace the art of city-building. Talking to urban designers, planners, and community advocates, Schneider takes readers on an insightful and entertaining tour of how we can make our cities work better for us today and into the future.
Architecture/Urban & Land Use Planning October 2025.
Paperback | $35.00 | 978-1-64283-353-9
E-book | $34.99 | 978-1-64283-354-6
296 pages. | 6 x 9
Benjamin Schneider is a freelance journalist covering all things urbanism. His work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, MIT Technology Review, Slate, The Nation, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. Born and raised in San Francisco, Schneider has lived in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Washington, D.C. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his fiancé
Author's residence: New York City, New York Of
Island Press Trade World Exclusive Movement
Bicycle City
Dan Piatkowski
Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet
Cover Forthcoming!
Amy Hetletvedt
Preserving With Purpose
Reimagining Buildings for Community Benefit
When Notre Dame burns, the world notices—but who notices when community landmarks vanish forever?
While prominent buildings like Notre Dame in Paris rise from the ashes, historic buildings in disinvested communities are lost at an alarming rate. The resulting holes in the fabric of the community are not only a loss of structures, but of the stories and the embedded possibilities that the buildings represent.
In Preserving with Purpose: Reimagining Buildings for Community Be nefit , architect Amy Hetletvedt unfolds a revolutionary-but-simple vision for re-thinking building conservation in vulnerable communities.
Architecture/Historic Preservation November 2025.
Paperback | $40.00 | 978-1-64283-348-5
E-book | $39.99 | 978-1-64283-349-2
216 pages. | 8 x 9
Island Press Short World Exclusive
Of related interest
The Power of Existing Buildings
Robert Sroufe, Craig Stevenson, and Beth Eckenrode
Profiles and case studies are featured from around the world including Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas and Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, Illinois. Fifteen case studies cover a broader geographic range and are organized into three purposeful interventions: priority, practical and poetic.
Preserving with Purpose is a compelling invitation into the beautiful and fruitful middle-ground between ruin and restoration.
Building for Life
Stephen R. Kellert
Amy Hetletvedt is a licensed architect, preservationist, and educator who has been supporting buildings, the people who love them, and the communities they serve for more than twenty years. She has lived and worked on four continents, collaborating on projects in a variety of scales and settings.
Hetletvedt is a former Historic District Commissioner for the City of Detroit and has taught master's level design studios and architectural ethics. Her writing has appeared in ArchDaily, Slate, DOCOMOMO, and regional architectural media.
Author's residence: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Carter Lavin
If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight
A Guide to Effective Transportation Advocacy
Your transportation dreams don’t need permission—they need a strategy. Start winning today!
While challenging our car-centric systems can feel daunting for anyone who wants change, you can win, and this book is here to help. In If You Want to Win, You’ve Got to Fight, transportation activist Carter Lavin provides a roadmap for transforming passion into political power.
Whether your dream is protected bike lanes, better bus service, or expanded high-speed rail, this book provides transportation-specific strategies for organizing for change. It draws upon advice from advocates across the United States and Lavin’s own experience with over 100 campaigns. Action points at the end of each chapter enable readers to move from brainstorming into concrete action.
Accessible and inspirational, this book will help people who are starting out, as well as experienced advocates plan, launch, and lead any transportation-related campaign.
Transportation November 2025.
Paperback | $32.00 | 978-1-64283-373-7
E-book | $31.99 | 978-1-64283-374-4
224 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Short World Exclusive
Carter Lavin is a climate and transportation activist who helps organizations and individuals hone strategy and build political power. Carter has directly supported and trained non-profits, candidates, grassroots groups, businesses, and hundreds of individuals to win on the issues that matter to them at the local, regional, and state level. He has written for Streetsblog and Convergence Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California and is a co-founder of the transportation advocacy group Transbay Coalition and the board game design company Serious Mischief.
Author's residence: New York, New York
Of related interest
Inclusive Transportation Veronica O. Davis
When Driving Is Not an Option
Anna Letitia Zivarts, foreword by Dani Simons
Business & Economics/Development/ Sustainable Development November 2025.
Paperback | $32.00 | 978-1-64283-371-3
E-book | $31.99 | 978-1-64283-372-0
256 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Short World Exclusive
Of related interest
Rebekah Pierce
Agri-Energy
Growing Power, Growing Food
Practical strategies, real-life stories: see how farmers across the country are making agri-energy work.
Most people don't think of agriculture when they hear the term "solar farm" or "wind farm." In fact, many fear that renewable energy installations are eating up prime farmland and threatening natural areas. But what if it weren't an either-or proposition? What if wind and solar could go hand-in-hand with environmentally sustainable farming?
In Agri-Energy , Rebekah Pierce shows how this growing trend can be a win-win-win for people, power, and the planet. Pierce gives farmers, developers, environmental activists, and concerned community members the information they need to successfully pair renewable energy and agriculture. The result is a concise but complete primer on a little-understood phenomenon with enormous implications for economic, food, and energy security.
Bet the Farm
Beth Hoffman Rural Renaissance L. Michelle Moore
Rebekah Pierce is a freelance writer in upstate New York. She and her husband own J & R Pierce Family Farm, which specializes in regenerative agriculture and solar grazing. They raise sheep, cattle, pigs, chickens, and turkeys.
Author's residence: Beekmantown, New York
Susan Kaplan Healthy Union
How States Can Lead on Environmental Health
Red states, blue states–all states can be environmental health champions.
States have tremendous power to protect their residents' health. In the absence of adequate federal safeguards against pollution and toxic chemicals, state regulations are the strongest tools available to create safe, sustainable environments. The good news is, around the country, red states and blue states are taking up the charge.
In A Healthy Union , Susan Kaplan highlights examples of groundbreaking state environmental health policies, from advancing environmental justice in California to reducing chemical use in Texas schools. These successful policies share key elements, including stateuniversity-industry partnerships, collaboration across government agencies, and strong environmental health education. Kaplan explores best practices in policymaking and advocacy, showing how to build on effective health protections, one state at a time.
Political Science/Public Policy/ Environmental Policy November 2025.
Paperback | $36.00 | 978-1-64283-369-0
E-book | $34.99 | 978-1-64283-370-6
200 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Short World Exclusive
Susan Kaplan, JD is Research Assistant Professor of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago. She previously developed regulations at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Washington, D.C., managed a state program to clean up and redevelop contaminated sites, and was assistant director of an energy policy group at Harvard University's Kennedy School. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Ensia, and other outlets. She lives mainly in Vermont.
Author's residence: Burlington, Vermont
Of related interest
Poisoning the Well
Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin
A New War on Cancer
Kristina Marusic
Architecture/Urban & Land Use Planning
December 2025.
Paperback | $35.00 | 978-1-64283-434-5
E-book | $34.99 | 978-1-64283-435-2
244 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Short
World Exclusive
Of related interest
Donald L. Elliott
An Even Better Way to Zone
Achieving
More Affordable, Equitable, and Sustainable
Communities
Every city has a zoning problem. Here's the roadmap to real change.
In An Even Better Way to Zone , planning expert Donald L. Elliott explains how outdated assumptions about development and unnecessary barriers in our zoning regulations have contributed to development patterns that are not sustainable, affordable, or equitable. He identifies what types of changes to zoning rules, procedures, and maps could improve outcomes in each of those areas. Importantly, Elliott also helps the reader think through what to do when zoning changes that would improve outcomes for one of those challenges would undermine success in the others.
An Even Better Way to Zone also reorients the zoning discussion towards redevelopment and reuse rather than implicitly focusing on raw land development, because already developed areas represent the vast majority of the built environment where meaningful changes will need to be made.
With engaging, easy-to-understand prose, Elliott provides practical, sage advice on adapting zoning to address today's most critical issues.
Arbitrary Lines
M. Nolan Gray
A Better Way to Zone
Donald L. Elliott
Donald L. Elliott is a Senior Consultant and past Director with Clarion Associates, LLC, a land use consulting firm with offices in Denver and Chapel Hill. He has assisted over 70 US and Canadian communities to update plans and regulations related to zoning, subdivision, housing, sustainability, fair housing, and land development. Elliott teaches a graduate level course on Land Use Regulation at the University of Colorado at Denver College of Architecture and Planning and is a former member of the Denver Planning Board. He is author of A Better Way to Zone and coauthor of The Rules that Shape Urban Form and The Citizen's Guide to Planning
Author's residence: Denver, Colorado
Austin Frerick Barons
Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry
A shocking portrait of corporate corruption in America's food industry, its implications on democracy, and what we can do to improve it.
Now with a new chapter on the Distribution Barons!
Best Books of 2024: "Frerick's prose throughout is both direct and masterfully controlled, with every point supported by extensive references and notes. This is no alarmist screed but rather a careful, systematic, and utterly damning demolition job–an exquisitely informed exposé... A genuinely revelatory look at mass food production in the United States" – Kirkus Reviews, starred
"In this eye-opening debut study, Frerick, an agricultural policy fellow at Yale University, reveals the ill-gained stranglehold that a handful of companies have on America's food economy.... It's a disquieting critique of private monopolization of public necessities." – Publishers Weekly, starred
Barons is the story of eight titans of the food industry, their rise to power, and the consequences for workers, eaters, and democracy itself. Readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will visit the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay—especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil. Barons paints a stark portrait of corporate consolidation, but it also shows that a fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible—if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.
Austin Frerick is an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy. He worked at the Open Markets Institute, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the Congressional Research Service before becoming a Fellow at Yale University. He is a 7th generation Iowan and 1st generation college graduate, with degrees from Grinnell College and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Author's residence: Brooklyn, New York
Political Science/Public Policy September 2025. Paperback | 978-1-64283-444-4
E-book | $28.99 | 978-1-64283-270-9
272 pages. | 6 x 9
Island Press Trade World Exclusive
Of related interest
Biting the Hands that Feed Us
J. Linnekin
Baylen
At the Table
Katherine Miller
