Nature Behind Barbed Wire is a triumph. It will surely become a staple of environmental history, Asian American history, and Western American history courses.

Curtis Foxley, Western Historical Quarterly

Nature Behind Barbed Wire offers an insightful and fresh perspective on the subject of Japanese American incarceration. Chiang's deft prose provides a concise narrative throughout, weaving together oral histories, statistical reports, and government memos with skill and clarity. The reframing of Japanese American Incarceration through the lens of environmental history reveals the value in approaching this history with alternative theoretical perspectives.

Koji Lau-Ozawa, Pacific Historical Review

If ... we separate the environmental degradation caused by humans from what we consider 'nature', we may be guilty of the sort of compartmentalization that facilitates that degradation ... With the Japanese American World War II mass incarceration as an example, Chiang's book is a strong argument for how short-sighted, costly, and cruel this perspective can be ... Chiang's study encompasses everything from the meticulously cared-for pre-World War II farms of Japanese Americans in California, to the dust storms created at the camps because native vegetation had been removed for construction, to the harsh climate and challenging farming conditions of the Desert West where Japanese Americans tried to settle after their release from the camps.

Jeffery F. Burton, Federal History Journal

As Connie Chiang has demonstrated in her impressive new book, applying an environmental lens to a familiar narrative

in this case, the wartime incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americanshighlights the significant role this small and marginalised community played before, during, and after World War II... The book marks a milestone as one of the first to examine incarceration from the perspective of environmental history. It will attract environmental historians and scholars with an interest in carceral studies, Asian American history and World War II.Clarence Jefferson Hall, Jr., Environment and History

Through fluid prose and engaging stories, Connie Chiang reveals the centrality of nature to the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated in War Relocation Authority camps during World War II. [Using three camps as case studies-Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, and Minidoka in Idaho-Chiang illustrates that soil, wind, weather, and landscape were important factors in the daily lives of internees and helped to shape their perceptions about themselves, their role in American society, and their place-literally and figuratively-in American democracy. Deeply researched and cogently argued, Nature Behind Barbed Wire requires us rethink our assumptions about this critical period in American history and establishes a new standard for integrating environmental analysis into the study of the past.

Lisa Brady, Boise State University

In oral history interviews I heard stories of freezing temperatures in the barracks during the winter, unbearable heat in the summer, choking dust storms, back-breaking farm work for little pay, and food shortages. Chiang's very impressive book describes and brings to life the underlying forces and unfortunate decisions that created the hardships so vividly remembered by Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II.

Tom Ikeda, Densho

Connie Chiang's Nature Behind Barbed Wire invites us to consider the wartime removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans through the lens of the lands on which the events unfolded. We are accustomed to thinking of this tragic episode as a story of human plans and will, but Chiang reminds us that time and again it was the environment that shaped that story's chapters. The book usefully interrupts our familiar patterns of conversation, reminding us that we can imagine and understand this time period in new and revealing ways.

Eric Muller, University of North Carolina School of Law

Chiang's book offers a stunningly original perspective. In revealing shared experiences of humans versus nature and humans with nature, it complicates expected narratives of humans versus humans. A welcome bold new approach!

Lon Kurashige, author of Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

In Nature Behind Barbed Wire, Connie Chiang uses environmental history to offer new information and insights into the impact of wartime confinement on Japanese Americans and on their surroundings. A masterful and eye-opening book.

Greg Robinson, Université du Québec à Montréal