In spite of a wonderful set of recent publications, the environmental history of Latin America remains largely an unchartered territory. A Living Past is both a much-needed realisation of what has already been achieved and an equally necessary agenda of what should be yet to come in terms of future research. In 11 substantial chapters, a distinguished array of scholars present a comprehensive panorama of their specific contributions to the field while outlining a broader map of the history and historiography of the region's environmental legacies and futures. These chapters are complemented with an introductory essay that identifies unifying trends and topics within the volume, and an epilogue that places Latin America's unique environmental developments – and their sociocultural correlates – within a global landscape. Besides individual efforts, this volume is also the result of the support of two pivotal institutions in the ongoing flourishing of Latin American environmental history: the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) and the Sociedad Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Historia Ambiental (Latin American and Caribbean Society of Environmental History, SOLCHA).

As is the case with most edited volumes, the selection of contributions brings in as much as it leaves aside. Based on the case studies covered, John Soluri, Claudia Leal and José Augusto Pádua argue that colonial legacies, nineteenth-century state formation, transoceanic exchange and tropicality are the four crucial trends that govern the field and allow for the dissection of ‘Latinamericanness’ within Latin American history. The editors compellingly narrate how contemporary environmental epistemologies have been and still are nourished by key historical processes that not only frame the place of the region in the world but may also be seen as responsible for the making of Latin America as an intellectual concept. While none of these features are truly unique to this corner of the globe, nowhere else has held such a combination as central to the formulation of a distinctive geopolitical and environmental identity. This volume may leave some major questions unaddressed – climate, energy and hydraulic regimes, to name a few – but the selected topics do prove to be as comprehensive and wide-ranging as possible.

Some contributions seem to be more the result of careful historical and historiographical re-examinations than original research. Christopher Boyer and Martha Micheline Cariño Olvera's chapter on Mexico's persistent ecological revolutions is an environmental recasting of Mexican history through the lens of nature and the political ecology of natural resource management. Reinaldo Funes Monzote's beautifully written piece on Cuban history ‘naturalises’ every economic and political development on the island, from the establishment of sugar mills to the rise of neoliberal tourism. Myrna Santiago's synthesis of the long history of extractivism connects the labour and environmental questions that framed the guano, copper and oil narratives of Peru, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador. Stuart McCook recounts the trajectory of developmentalism and the role of ecological sciences in enhancing the nationalisation of nature and informing its manifold transformations into state resources.

Other contributions, instead, are based on new empirical evidence, ethnographic research and spatial analysis. Nicolás Cuvi combines quantitative information about indigenous populations and environmental conditions in the tropical Andes to shed light upon various aspects of political landscaping. Pádua also ventures into statistical agricultural data for outlining the greater territorial dynamics essential for understanding the extent and limits of Brazilian nationhood. Leal merges spatial information about forest degradation with the cultural and political narratives, often conflictive, of state-making in the jungles of South America, Central America and Mexico. Lise Sedrez and Regina Horta Duarte's urban appraisal of the continent's past and, more importantly, its polluted present builds upon the conspicuous atmospheric information collected by the Red Panamericana de Muestreo de la Contaminación del Aire (Pan American Air Pollution Monitoring Network, REDPANAIRE). Soluri's sensitive ethnography of campesinos in Mexico, Peru, Brazil and other coffee-producing regions unveils the key roles of rural dwellers in the making of national diets and the contested maintenance of agrodiversity. Shawn Van Ausdal and Robert Wilcox's combined expertise builds upon ranching statistics compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for enlightening the prevalence of cattle cultures throughout the region. Finally, Emily Wakild's path-breaking essay on the establishment of natural parks employs both spatial and statistical information for mapping and quantifying the politics of conservation.

Embedded within these contributions, readers will find a number of insightful concepts and undisclosed arguments that should nurture future conversations and publications. The ecological impacts of social mobilisations, the socio-energy transitions of nation-states, the criollo transformation of nature and society in the Andes, the locus of Latin America in the Anthropocene, the environmental making of cities and countryside, the usefulness of environmentally rethinking conventional social and political chronologies, and the need for a deep history of nature are some of the most interesting subjects contained in many of these pages. Considering the difficulties of approaching any edited volume, it is unfortunate that A Living Past does not offer any form of internal structure and organisation, aside from the introduction, that would facilitate a more integrated reading of its different essays. Also, given the ambitiousness of a number of contributions, there are a few minor imprecisions. Quinoa, Chenopodium quinoa, is either a pseudocereal – meaning not a true C4 grass – or a grain, but not a ‘pseudograin’ (p. 169). Far from being a case of ‘conflict without successful mobilization’ (p. 207), the labour history of the guano boom involved uprisings, enduring racial conflicts and the social mobilisation of workers – Chinese and others – which triggered some early legal transformations. Finally, inasmuch as the ecological sciences assisted states in securing environmental sovereignties that ‘ultimately [helped] conserve their natural resources’ (p. 241), the neoliberalisation of state and science has also contributed to deregulate extractivism and maximise the logics of degradation.

Needless to say, A Living Past is a commendable intellectual achievement and required reading for the initiated scholar and the unseasoned reader alike. Instructors and students will benefit from its use inside the classroom, while researchers might find inspiration and a valuable assortment of topics, documental resources and bibliographic references. It is lamentable, however, that another pivotal piece of scholarly work might remain restricted to limited access through libraries due to the significant price of this hardcover edition. One would hope potential translations to Spanish or Portuguese, deemed urgent in the opinion of this reviewer, would bring down the cost and boost the circulation of these essays.