The environmental history of warfare has not been subject to much research. Edmund Russell’s book War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring fills this gap by examining the relationship between chemical warfare and pest control. Russell argues that "the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature" (p. 2) Russell’s treatment of this complex relationship is highly successful in making visible the connections and flows of meaning between nature and culture, war and peace, humans and insects. Within the gas clouds, the boundaries between spheres that previously had been considered separate were blurred. It is a highly readable and very rewarding book, recommended for readers interested in fields as diverse as American, environmental, technological, business, and war history. ( )