‘Go Out and Sue a Polluter’ | Scott W. Stern Shortly before Christmas in 1969 a dense fog rolled in across the bayous of the Texas Gulf Coast. For more than four days it blanketed a vast region, as

For a brief period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Texas had a populist environmental movement, led not by elite conservationists or representatives from national green groups but working-class activists, writes @scottwstern.bsky.social @nybooks.com

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

new from @scottwstern.bsky.social on the origins of environmental justice in texas for @nybooks.com

My stab at a usable history of our environmental present - plz read!!

‘Go Out and Sue a Polluter’ | Scott W. Stern Shortly before Christmas in 1969 a dense fog rolled in across the bayous of the Texas Gulf Coast. For more than four days it blanketed a vast region, as

“What this movement is saying is that the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in a community that is not contaminated should be a right all of us enjoy.”
-- Robert Bullard, 1991

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/... via @scottwstern.bsky.social & @nybooks.com

#EnvironmentalJustice

‘Go Out and Sue a Polluter’ | Scott W. Stern Shortly before Christmas in 1969 a dense fog rolled in across the bayous of the Texas Gulf Coast. For more than four days it blanketed a vast region, as

So pleased to share my latest in @nybooks.com, a deep dive into the history of "a working-class, populist environmental movement" in Texas. The piece draws on years of archival work, but I hope it's illuminating for our present.

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

The Historian Who Wants to Imagine an Alternative to Capitalism Trevor Jackson traces the “dumb, inhuman logic” of endless growth over hundreds of years, and gestures at a better world.

Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com, wherein I review a brilliant, shockingly svelte history of capitalism (out now from
@wwnorton.com)!

Thanks, as always, to @lauramarsh.bsky.social for the incisive edits! newrepublic.com/article/2088...

This technology should be destroyed with hammers www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Charles O’Malley and @scottwstern.bsky.social had such a great idea for a book! Can’t wait to dive in.

Ahh thank you!! Well this made my day - @charlesomalley.bsky.social and I are both huge fans of your work!

Shakespeare’s Margaret: The Dramatic Life of A Warrior Queen by undefined Theater critic O’Malley (editor of Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance) and lawyer Stern (The Trials of Nina McCall) assemble ...

SHAKESPEARE'S MARGARET has its first review, from @publisherswkly.bsky.social!!!

"O’Malley and Stern ingeniously probe the sweep of Shakespearean history ... The result is a fascinating biography of a singular character and a revealing commentary on theater’s power to evolve with the times."

This sounds like an ad, but it's about murder.

Shakespeare’s Margaret: The Dramatic Life of A Warrior Queen by undefined Theater critic O’Malley (editor of Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance) and lawyer Stern (The Trials of Nina McCall) assemble ...

The first review of SHAKESPEARE'S MARGARET (@wwnorton.com) is out in @publisherswkly.bsky.social, and it's a RAVE!

"Enthralling ... A fascinating biography of a singular character and a revealing commentary on theater’s power to evolve with the times." www.publishersweekly.com/9781324076551

in just the past few years, the bay area has welcomed three fantastic new outlets: @oaklandside.org @oaklandreviewofbooks.org AND @bayareacurrent.bsky.social

they are wonderful and we should support them !!

Thank you!!! That’s really kind!

Never ceases to amaze and inspire me that @scottwstern.bsky.social writes like he does on top of working full-time as an environmental lawyer

This from @andreapitzer.bsky.social is key.

“nobody sane now thinks the answer to abuses at Dachau was to give the guards more training.”

SHAKESPEARE'S MARGARET, the book i wrote with my co-conspirator / husband @scottwstern.bsky.social, is coming out 2 june 2026 from @wwnorton.com!

take a look at the book page linked below and place those preorders!

we're traveling in june to promote the book; hope to see some of you on the road 😎

Y'all, @charlesomalley.bsky.social and my book, SHAKESPEARE'S MARGARET, comes out on June 2!!!

Please please please consider preordering - it honestly makes a huge difference!! wwnorton.com/books/978132...

Earth, Bound | Scott W. Stern The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 marked the birth of international environmental law. It was moribund from the start.

International environmental law has floundered in the face of the global climate crisis and cannot hold our worst actors to account. In our new issue, @scottwstern.bsky.social traces the problems back to the 1972 UN Conference that put us on this trajectory.

Higher Ed's Bad Bargain To salvage academic freedom amid Trump’s attacks, universities must break from their Cold War compromise with US militarism.

“Where once [universities] shook their heads at the naivete of the students whose chants asked them how many kids they’d killed today, now they are practically submitting their tallies to the DOD, one last desperate gambit to maintain the status quo.” jewishcurrents.org/higher-eds-b...

Earth, Bound | Scott W. Stern The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 marked the birth of international environmental law. It was moribund from the start.

Check out my latest in @thebaffler.com!

A deep, deep dive into the tragic history of international environmental law - and why it "offers a singularly straightforward parable for the tragic limitations of the law." thebaffler.com/salvos/earth...

Check out my latest in The Baffler!!! On the "tragedy of international environmental law" (a subject that, tragically, is only growing more relevant by the day...)

Thanks, as always, to @lauramarsh.bsky.social for the astute edits!!!

How the Heartland Responded to AIDS and Shaped Queer Politics Histories of the epidemic tend to focus on coastal cities, but the response was very different in the middle of the country.

Check out my latest in @newrepublic.com - a double review of two incisive new books (AIDS IN THE HEARTLAND and FROM VICE TO NICE, both @uncpress.bsky.social) chronicling the histories of HIV/AIDS far from NYC or SF - in places like Kansas and Minneapolis. newrepublic.com/article/2004...

"The United States and its satellites, having taken the centre stage of history to great fanfare after the fall of the Soviet Union, are now exiting in disgrace." This looks like a promising new publication.

www.equator.org

Mass protests and strikes for Gaza bring Italy to a standstill Roads and ports were blocked and schools closed after unions called for general strike over Israel’s war on Gaza.

This is a massive story that the U.S. press is almost entirely ignoring.

A week ago, union dockworkers warned this would happen: “If we lose contact with the boats, even for twenty minutes, we’ll shut down all of Europe.”

www.politico.eu/article/ital...

Thrilled to see this review of EXTRACTION by @scottwstern.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com. A very thorough essay that situates the book in broader debates about mining, the energy transition, the history of global capitalism, and the possible green futures ahead www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

The Costs of the Green Transition A new book argues that simply replacing fossil-fuel extraction with critical-mineral mining is no way out of the climate crisis.

Check out my latest in @theatlantic.com, wherein I review EXTRACTION (@wwnorton.com), a dazzling new book by @triofrancos.bsky.social.

I argue that it is "by far the most clear-eyed of mining’s many recent chronicles." www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Large Language Muddle | The Editors The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

"A literature which is made by machines, which are owned by corporations, which are run by sociopaths, can only be a 'stereotype' — a simplification, a facsimile, an insult, a fake — of real literature. It should be smashed, and can." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

Writing Their Prison’s History | Scott W. Stern A recent study by a group of incarcerated scholars at Indiana Women’s Prison reveals how progressive reforms turned into profitable abuse.

“Of all the women incarcerated worldwide, one in four is imprisoned in the US. Over the past four decades, the number of women in state prisons has grown by almost 600 percent.” — @scottwstern.bsky.social