Big Box USA presents a new look at how the big box retail store has dramatically reshaped the US economy and its ecosystems in the last half century.

The rise of big box retail since the 1960s has transformed environments on both local and global scales. The allure of “everyday low prices” and brightly colored products of every kind connect shoppers with a global marketplace. Big Box USA addresses the ways American retail institutions have affected physical and cultural ecologies around the world. Essays on Walmart, Target, Cabela’s, REI, and Bass Pro Shops assess the “bigness” of these superstores from “smokestacks to coat racks” and contend that their ecological impacts are not limited to the footprints of parking lots and manufacturing but also play a didactic role in educating consumers about their relationships with the environment.

A model for historians seeking to bring business and environmental histories together in their analyses of merchant capital’s role in the landscapes of everyday life and how it has remade human relationships with nature, Big Box USA is a must-hear for students and scholars of the environment, business, sustainability, retail professionals, and a general audience.

The book is published by University of Wyoming Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

“A significant contribution to environmental history...Intellectually stimulating and engagingly written.” (Ai Hisano, University of Tokyo)

"Significant contributions to the intersection of business and environmental history..." (H-Environment)

"An environmental studies course or scholar interested in the environmental effects of retail could do well to read this book as a starting point." (Electronic Green Journal)