Jason L. Newton

It was the greatest honor of my career to be a runner up for the George Perkins Marsh prize for best book in environmental history at #aseh2025. I wrote this book for these people and it is so great to know they liked it!

As a sequel post to my most popular post ever, I want to announce that I’m also OK with my kid “scrolling” as much as they want. 😅

We were hesitant to get our kids a tablet but now that we have one we can’t live without it.

Packing up my books yet again and wondering why we haven’t mandated standard book dimensions. There is no reason most books can’t be 6x9.

@2024dion @UrbanCourtyard It can’t be because there are about 300 of these exact same apartments in Charlotte, NC.

Is this the ugliest contemporary apartment building in the United States?

In the fall I have to teach all of American history, from time immemorial to now, in 15 weeks. If I have to be reductionist I'm going whole-hog. Here is my course title.

Listen to what happens when you bank the unbanked: crippling, inescapable debt on a massive scale. wsj.com/podcasts/the-j…

Here is a link to my talk "Do Trees Have Agency?" Even though this was for a popular audience I get into historiography, the liberal tradition, and unconventional views on the causes of historical change. canva.com/design/DAHPAFW…

Clearly I meant methodologically.

Even though I was trained as a labor and environmental historian 15 years ago, I am still learning everyday what it really means to be a materialist / neo-materialist (I don’t see these as necessarily exclusive), politically and methodically.

I know a union auto worker makes more than I do but my job requires a PhD in the humanities… How are they gonna square that circle? npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-…

Join tonight at 6:30 pm ET to hear my talk on trees as historical actors. This is for the urban forestry non-profit Trees Charlotte. Here is the zoom link us02web.zoom.us/j/89576313799

@bankertobuilder Not to mention this amazing amount of siding color and texture variation! If I were king for a day I would increase the amount of gables, however.

Kings in the Middle Ages could only dream of having the comfort of a middle-class apartment building in a random suburb 30 miles outside a 3rd-tier city

Here Mokyr agrees with Engels that industrialization was not good to live through but good for those after. He doesn't ask why people chose, then, to live through it. The truth is, they didn't. Coercion was at the heart of industrial capitalism. open.spotify.com/episode/5zSzPQ…

It was so great to participate in the Yale Forest Forum last year and they just published the series, "A History of Scientific Forestry: From Extraction to Ecosystem Management." Check it out here: yff.yale.edu/sites/default/…

Who says climate change is all bad? I have been line drying my laundry so quickly!

I'm pleased to announce that I will be starting a new position at the University of Utah as an assistant teaching professor in the fall. Please message me for the best email to use as my Charlotte email will be deactivated soon.

Some months ago, I began typing an email to my friend historian Richard John and quickly realized I was writing an essay I had wanted to do for years. I published it this morning and call it, "Two Forms of 'Technology' Criticism: Cultural Pessimism Versus Materialism." In it, I make a distinction between materialist critique and a different tradition rooted in cultures of despair and condescension that frets about "instrumental reason" and something it calls "technology." Materialism is right and good. Cultural pessimism sucks. Link below.

History fact: my father was a salaried professional and he never checked his email at the dinner table when I was growing up. That wasn’t possible at the time. Oh how things have changed.

I'm still hard-pressed to find a reason to think that the global adoption of the personal, internal combustion engine automobile has been a net positive development in the trajectory of history.

Some economists want to conflate cheapness with virtue when it comes to the new #housing act. Banning corporate homeownership can be the right thing to do even if it makes rents more expensive. The same is true of a lot of environmental legislation too.