Char Miller

Recent Podcast

“Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril,” New Books Network, January 7, 2023, online

“Narrative Species,” KSQD (Santa Cruz), online

“West Side Rising,” New Books on the America West podcast, December 2, 2022

Recent Interview

“What We Can Learn About the L.A. Fires with Char Miller,” TenAcross, January 31, 2025

“Los Angeles Shouldn’t Build the Same Way Again,” New York Magazine, January 13, 2025

“How America Built Cities to Burn,” Lever Time, January 17, 2025

“Behind the Blaze: Why Los Angeles Burned,” Beerocracy! January 15, 2025: Youtube link; Spotify link

“How will Los Angeles recover from its biggest wildfire in history?” Money Matters (Singapore), January 13, 2025

“A Tale of Two Rivers: Los Angeles and San Antonio,” Save As: NextGen Heritage Conservationpodcast, May 29, 2024, online

Recent Video

“Wildfires continue to cause destruction in Los Angeles,” ABC (Australia), January 12, 2025

Interview on Los Angeles Fires with Nii-Quaterlai Quartey, More Perfect Union: KBLA, January13, 2025

Recent Books

Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, From Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (2024)

Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril (2022)

West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement  (2021)

Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents (2020)

San Antonio: A Tricentennial History (2018)

Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land (2018)

Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream (2016)

America's Great National Forests, Wildernesses, and Grasslands (2016)

Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot (2013).

Death Valley National Park: A History (2013).

On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest (2013).

Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy (2012). Lecture about the book and its making

Recent Anthologies

Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena (2020)​

Forty Years a Forester (2019)

The Nature of Hope: Environmental Justice, Grassroots Organizing, and Political Change (2019)

Where There’s Smoke: The Environmental Science, Policy, and Politics of Marijuana (2018)

Gifford Pinchot: Selected Writings (2017)

Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene: Science, Policy, Practice (2016)

Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel (2013).

Cities and Nature in the American West (2010).

River Basins of the American West (2009).

Water in the Twenty-First Century West (2009).

Richard Harding Davis: The West from a Car-Window, Library of Texas series, (2006).

Fifty Years of the Texas Observer (2004).

Recent Articles & Chapters

“Narrative Possibilities,” in Char Miller, ed., special issue, “Rethinking Arizona’s Environmental History,” Journal of Arizona History, 65:3, Autumn 2024, 229-35.

“Throughlines,” in Char Miller, ed., special issue, “Rethinking Arizona’s Environmental History,” Journal of Arizona History, 65:3, Autumn 2024, 357-61.

“Wild, Managed, and Reclaimed: The Complex Environmental History of the San Antonio River Watershed,” in Greg Gordon, ed., Rewilding the Urban Frontier: River Conservation in the Anthropocene (Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2024), 69-91.

“From the Ground Up: Raymond M. Conarro and the Creation of Weeks Act Forests,” Forest History Today, 29/30: 1-2, 2023-24, 58-67.

“Pictures at an Exhibition: Rendering the Los Angeles River,” Eden: Quarterly Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society, 25:4, Fall 2022, 30-37. With Tilly Hinton.

“Walking in the Los Angeles River: An Immersive Experience,” Eden: Quarterly Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society, 25:3, Summer 2022, 30-39.

“Railroad Miles and Slash-Pine Seeds,” Forest Source, 27:4: April 2022, 1, 17.

“A Long Look Ahead: William L. Bray and Early Texas Conservationism,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 125:3, January 2022, 251-69.

“Architects of Smoke,” Forecast Journal, Issue 9: Sustainability, Winter 2022, 48-52.

“’Greed for Land’: W.W. Ashe and the Environmental Roots of the 1921 Flood in Central Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 125:1, July 2021, 62-73.

“Reclamation Project: Rediscovering W. W. Ashe and the Origins of Watershed Stewardship,” Forest History Today, 26:1/2, Spring /Fall 2020, 40-49.

“Streetscape Environmentalism: Flood Control, Social Justice, and Political Power in San Antonio, 1921-1974,” in Miller and Crane, eds., The Nature of Hope: Environmental Justice, Grassroots Organizing and Political Change (2019), 100-119.

“Future Imperfect: The Forest Service and Federal Land Management in a Climate-Charged Environment,” in Steve Wilent, ed., 193 Million Acres: Toward a Healthier and More Resilient US Forest Service (Bethesda MD: Society of American Foresters, 2019), 601-619.

“’Vast, Incredible Damage’: The US Forest Service and the Herbicide Wars,” in Janet Brodie, Vivien Hamilton and Brinda Sarathy, eds., Inevitably Toxic: Historical Perspectives on Contamination, Exposure, and Expertise, (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), 182-206. With James G. Lewis.

“Essential Landscape: An Environmental History of Chaparral Ecosystems in California,” in E.C. Underwood, et al., eds.Valuing Chaparral: Ecological, Social, and Management Perspectives, Springer Series on Environmental Management, (Springer, 2018), 123-40.

Recent Documentaries

“Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust,” Ann Kaneko, premiered at BigSky Film Festival, February 26, 2021.

Bring Your Own Brigade, Lucy Walker Films (2021); Selected for Sundance Film Festival. Premiered January 29, 2021.

River’s End: California’s Latest Water War, ShivHans Pictures, 2021. Premiered January 14, 2021.

America's First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Biltmore Forest School (Bonesteel Films/PBS, 2016)

The Big Burn (PBS: American Experience, 2015)