Empire isn't just enacted abroad. It also affects, in profound ways, people living in the imperial metropole. In the volume Colonial Crucible, Natalie Ring reveals that domestic attitudes toward the US South were influenced by imperialist adventures in tropical locales, and Kristin Hoganson describes how turn-of-the-twentieth-century US consumers "bought into empire."

Urban sprawl results in more fossil fuel consumption, which accelerates climate change. George Gonzalez has investigated US elites' role in spurring suburbanization and harming the planet. And Larry Bogad uses political pranks and street theater to highlight official inaction on, among other things, global warming.