A virtual bookshelf co-sponsored by the Council of Student Sustainability Leaders and Countway Library
The Council of Student Sustainability Leaders (CSSL), operating under the Harvard Office for Sustainability (OFS), is a group of Harvard undergraduate and graduate students who lead, organize, and participate in sustainability projects and groups throughout the university. The CSSL Bookshelf at Countway is a collection of thought-provoking sustainability books developed in collaboration with CSSL, Countway Library, and the Harvard Medical School community.
This collection amalgamates diverse perspectives into a curated and organized selection aimed at advancing and transferring knowledge for the betterment of the Harvard community and the planet.
Please suggest a book for the collection. To learn more about CSSL, please visit the CSSL website.
For questions, contact David Havelick, Office for Sustainability Associate Director
Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson Keywords: Environmental Justice; Environmental Policy; Ecofeminism More Details About All We Can Save | All We Can Save HOLLIS Link |
by Omar El Akkad Themes/Keywords: |
by Max H. Bazerman Keywords: Behavior; business; sustainability; philosophy; psychology More Details About Better, Not Perfect | Better, Not Perfect HOLLIS Link |
by Hal Harvey, Justin Gillis Keywords: Environmental Policy; Energy Policy; Activism, How-to |
by Kathryn Yusoff Keywords: Geology; Ethnicity; Climate change; Climate Justice More Details About A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None | A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None HOLLIS Link |
by Lydia Millet Keywords: Fiction; Environmental Disasters; Family Vacation More Details About A Children's Bible | A Children's Bible HOLLIS Link |
by Greta Thunberg Keywords: Civil Liberties; Political Activism More Details About The Climate Book | The Climate Book HOLLIS Link |
by Mary Robinson Keywords: Environmental Justice; Environmental Policy; Activism; Social Justice More Details About Climate Justice | Climate Justice HOLLIS Link |
by Paul Hawken (Editor) Keywords: Environmental Policy; Sustainable Living; Sustainable Development |
by Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes Keywords: Business; Economics; Development; Sustainable Development More Details About Earth for All | Earth for All HOLLIS Link |
by David R. Loy Keywords: Buddhism, Spirituality, Mindfulness |
by Peter Sutoris Keywords: Education; Environmental Education; Environmental Activism More Details About Educating for the Anthropocene | Educating for the Anthropocene HOLLIS Link |
by Bill McKibben Keywords: Environmental Conservation & Protection; Global Warming More Details About The End of Nature | The End of Nature HOLLIS Link |
by Megan Hunter Keywords: Fiction; Motherhood More Details About The End We Start From | The End We Start From HOLLIS Link |
by Jay Lemery and Paul Auerbach Keywords: Human Health; Medicine; Science |
by Barbara Kingsolver Keywords: Fiction, Thriller More Details About Flight Behavior | Flight Behavior HOLLIS Link |
by Andrea Wulf Keywords: Nature; History; Biography (Humboldt); Memoir; Conservation; South America; Europe More Details About The Invention of Nature | The Invention of Nature HOLLIS Link |
by Martin Puchner Keywords: Humanities; Climate Change Narratives More Details About Literature for a Changing Planet | Literature for a Changing Planet HOLLIS Link |
by David Archer Keywords: Paleoclimatology; Geology More Details About The Long Thaw | The Long Thaw HOLLIS Link |
by Cherie Dimaline Keywords: Fiction; Dystopia, Science Fiction More Details About The Marrow Thieves | The Marrow Thieves HOLLIS Link |
by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway Keywords: Role of Science in Society; Politics of Science; History of Science More Details About Merchants of Doubt | Merchants of Doubt HOLLIS Link |
by Ann-Christine Duhaime, MD Keywords: Neuroscience; Cognitive Science; Climate Change More Details About Minding the Climate | Minding the Climate HOLLIS Link |
by Kim Stanley Robinson Keywords: Climate Change More Details About The Ministry for the Future | The Ministry for the Future HOLLIS Link |
by Michael Mann Keywords: Historical; Non-fiction More Details About Our Fragile Moment | Our Fragile Moment HOLLIS Link |
by Richard Powers Keywords: Nature; Sustainability; Storytelling; Activism; Fiction More Details About The Overstory | The Overstory HOLLIS Link |
by Octavia E. Butler Keywords: Novel; Graphic Novel; Dystopian More Details About The Parable of the Sower | The Parable of the Sower HOLLIS Link |
by Thomas D. Lee Keywords: Fantasy, Fiction More Details About Perilous Times | Perilous Times HOLLIS Link |
by Toby Ord Keywords: Philosophy; Sociology More Details About The Precipice | The Precipice HOLLIS Link |
by Dirk Schoenmaker; Willem Schramade Keywords: Social Sciences; Economics; Sustainability; Finance More Details About Principles of Sustainable Finance | Principles of Sustainable Finance HOLLIS Link |
by George Monbiot Keywords: Non-fiction; Agriculture; Science |
by Elizabeth Hoover Keywords: Environmental Policy; Environmental Health; Health and Hygiene; Native American Studies More Details About The River Is in Us | The River Is in Us HOLLIS Link |
by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson; Carl Wennerlind Keywords: Business; Economic History; Capitalism; Political Economy; History; Climate Change |
by Rob Nixon Keywords: Activism; Nonfiction; Environmental Justice More Details About Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor | Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor HOLLIS Link |
by Alexis Wright Keywords: Fiction; Dystopian; Indigenous Studies More Details About The Swan Book | The Swam Book HOLLIS Link |
by Josiah Rector Keywords: Environmental Studies; Political History; Public Policy; Social Issues; African American Studies |
by David Wallace-Wells Keywords: Science; Domestic Politics More Details About The Uninhabitable Earth | The Uninhabitable Earth HOLLIS Link |
by Jenny Offill Keywords: Fiction; Psychology |
by Mona Hanna-Attisha Keywords: Environmental Justice, health Equity, Public Health More Details About What the Eyes Don't See | What the Eyes Don't See HOLLIS Link |
by Jean-Marc Jancovici, Christophe Blain Keywords: Graphic Novel More Details About World Without End | World Without End HOLLIS Link TBD |
by Thich Nhat Hanh Keywords: Buddhism, Spirituality, Mindfulness More Detail About Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet | Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet HOLLIS Link |
All We Can Save
American War
Better, Not Perfect: A Realist's Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness
The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
A Children’s Bible
The Climate Book
Climate Justice
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity
Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis
Educating for the Anthropocene: Schooling and Activism in the Face of Slow Violence
The End of Nature
The End We Start From
Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health
Flight Behavior
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Literature for a Changing Planet
The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate
The Marrow Thieves
Merchants of Doubt
Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis
The Ministry for the Future
Our Fragile Moment
The Overstory
The Parable of the Sower
Perilous Times
The Precipice
Principles of Sustainable Finance
Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet
The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community
Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
The Swan Book
Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Weather
What the Eyes Don't See
World Without End
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet-
All We Can Save
Book Title All We Can Save Author(s) Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson Publisher One World Publication Year 2021 ISBN 978-0593237083 Key Words Environmental Justice; Environmental Policy; Ecofeminism Recommended by LMA campus students Recommendation Summary All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States—scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race—and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society
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American War
Book Title American War Author(s) Omar El Akkad Publisher McClelland & Stewart; Alfred A. Knopf Publication Year 2017 ISBN 978-0451493583 Key Words Fiction; Dystopia Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary A unique and eerily convincing masterwork, American War takes a scalpel to American politics, precisely dissecting it to see what would happen if their own policies were turned against them. The answer: inevitable, endless bloodshed.
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Better, Not Perfect: A Realist's Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness
Book Title Better, Not Perfect: A Realist's Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness Author(s) Max H. Bazerman Publisher Harper Business Publication Year 2020 ISBN ######## Key Words Behavior; business; sustainability; philosophy; psychology Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Better, Not Perfect provides a deeply researched, prescriptive roadmap for how to maximize our pleasure and minimize pain. Bazerman shares a framework to be smarter and more efficient, honest and aware—to attain your “maximum sustainable goodness.”
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The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet
Book Title The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet Author(s) Hal Harvey, Justin Gillis Publisher Simon & Schuster Publication Year 2022 ISBN ######## Key Words Environmental Policy; Energy Policy; Activism, How-to Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary In The Big Fix, energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis offer a new, hopeful way to engage with one of the greatest problems of our age. Writing in a lively, accessible style, the pair illuminate how the really big decisions that affect our climate get made—whether by the most obscure public utilities commissions or in the lofty halls of state capitols—and reveal how each of us can influence these decisions to deliver change. The pair focus on the seven areas of our political economy where ambitious but practical changes will have the greatest effect: from what kind of power plants to build to how much insulation new houses require to how efficient cars must be before they’re allowed on the road.
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A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
Book Title A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None Author(s) Kathryn Yusoff Publisher University Of Minnesota Press Publication Year 2018 ISBN 1-4529-6105-0 Key Words Geology; Ethnicity; Climate change; Climate Justice Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Kathryn Yusoff examines how the grammar of geology is foundational to establishing the extractive economies of subjective life and the earth under colonialism and slavery. She initiates a transdisciplinary conversation between black feminist theory, geography, and the earth sciences, addressing the politics of the Anthropocene within the context of race, materiality, deep time, and the afterlives of geology.
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A Children's Bible
Book Title A Children's Bible Author(s) Lydia Millet Publisher W. W. Norton & Company Publication Year 2020 ISBN 978-0393867381 Key Words Fiction; Environmental Disasters; Family Vacation Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary A Children’s Bible follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their parents, the children decide to run away when a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, embarking on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. Lydia Millet’s prophetic and heartbreaking story of generational divide offers a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.
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The Climate Book
Book Title The Climate Book Author(s) Greta Thunberg Publisher Allen Lane; Simon & Schuster; Penguin Books Publication Year 2022 ISBN 9780241547472; 9780593492307 Key Words Civil Liberties; Political Activism Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts—geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders—to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild’s strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried?
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Climate Justice
Book Title Climate Justice Author(s) Mary Robinson Publisher Bloomsbury Publication Year 2018 ISBN 978-1408888438 Key Words Environmental Justice; Environmental Policy; Activism; Social Justice Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson's mission to bring together the fight against climate change and the global struggle for human rights has taken her all over the world. It also brought her to a heartening revelation: that that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself. Robinson met with ordinary people whose resilience and ingenuity had already unlocked extraordinary change: from a Mississippi matriarch whose campaign began in her East Biloxi hair salon and culminated in her speaking at the United Nations, to a farmer who transformed the fortunes of her ailing community in rural Uganda. In Climate Justice, she shares their stories, and many more. Powerful and deeply humane, this uplifting book is a stirring manifesto on one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time, and a lucid, affirmative, and well-argued case for hope.
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Drawdown, The Book
Book Title Drawdown, The Book Author(s) Paul Hawken (Editor) Publisher Penguin Books Publication Year 2017 ISBN ######## Key Words Environmental Policy; Sustainable Living; Sustainable Development Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.
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Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity
Book Title Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity Author(s) Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes Publisher New Society Publishers Publication Year 2022 ISBN 9780865719866.00 Key Words Business; Economics; Development; Sustainable Development Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Earth For All is an antidote to despair. Combining the global economy, population, inequality, food, and energy in a state-of-the art computer model, a leading group of scientists and economists present a plan of five system-shifting steps to achieve prosperity for all within planetary limits in a single generation.
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Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis
Book Title Ecodharma: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis Author(s) David R. Loy Publisher Wisdom Publication Year 2019 ISBN 978-1614293828 Key Words Buddhism, spirituality, mindfulness Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary This landmark work is simultaneously a manifesto, a blueprint, a call to action, and a deep comfort for troubling times. David R. Loy masterfully lays out the principles and perspectives of Ecodharma—the Buddhist response to our ecological predicament, a new term for a new development of the Buddhist tradition.
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Educating for the Anthropocene: Schooling and Activism in the Face of Slow Violence
Book Title Educating for the Anthropocene: Schooling and Activism in the Face of Slow Violence Author(s) Peter Sutoris Publisher The MIT Press Publication Year 2022 ISBN 9780262370721.00 Key Words Education; Environmental Education; Environmental Activism Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Education has never played as critical a role in determining humanity's future as it does in the Anthropocene, an era marked by humankind's unprecedented control over the natural environment. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic project among schools and activist groups in India and South Africa, Peter Sutoris explores education practices in the context of impoverished, marginal communities where environmental crises intersect with colonial and racist histories and unsustainable practices. He exposes the depoliticizing effects of schooling and examines cross-generational knowledge transfer within and beyond formal education. Finally, he calls for the bridging of schooling and environmental activism, to find answers to the global environmental crisis.
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The End of Nature
Book Title The End of Nature Author(s) Bill McKibben Publisher Random House Publication Year 1989 ISBN 978-0812976083 Key Words Environmental Conservation & Protection; Global Warming Recommended by LMA campus students Recommendation Summary This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben’s argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth’s environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement.
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The End We Start From
Book Title The End We Start From Author(s) Megan Hunter Publisher Grove Publication Year 2017 ISBN 978-0802126894 Key Words fiction; motherhood Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary A startlingly beautiful story of a family’s survival, The End We Start From is a searing original, a modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of maternal bonds, and the instinct to survive and thrive in the absence of all that’s familiar.
As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place. Their journey traces fear and wonder as the baby grows, thriving and content against all the odds.
The End We Start From is an indelible and elemental first book—a lyrical vision of the strangeness and beauty of new motherhood, and a tale of endurance in the face of ungovernable change.
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Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health
Book Title Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health Author(s) Jay Lemery and Paul Auerbach Publisher Rowman & Littlefield Publication Year 2017 ISBN 9781442243187.00 Key Words Human Health; Medicine; Science Recommended by LMA campus students Recommendation Summary Many of us have concerns about the effects of climate change on Earth, but we often overlook the essential issue of human health. This book addresses that oversight and enlightens readers about the most important aspect of one of the greatest challenges of our time.
By weighing in from a physician’s perspective, Jay Lemery and Paul Auerbach clarify the science, dispel the myths, and help readers understand the threats of climate change to human health. No better argument exists for persuading people to care about climate change than a close look at its impacts on our physical and emotional well-being.
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Flight Behavior
Book Title Flight Behavior Author(s) Barbara Kingsolver Publisher HarperCollins Publication Year 2012 ISBN 978-0062124272 Key Words Fiction, Thriller Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver's riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions—religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians—trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world. Flight Behavior represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.
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The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Book Title The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World Author(s) Andrea Wulf Publisher Knopf; Vintage Publication Year 2015 ISBN 978-0385350662 (HC); 978-0345806291 (PB) Key Words Nature; History; Biography (Humboldt); Memoir; Conservation; South America; Europe Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary In this illuminating biography, Andrea Wulf brings Humboldt’s extraordinary life back into focus: his prediction of human-induced climate change; his daring expeditions to the highest peaks of South America and to the anthrax-infected steppes of Siberia; his relationships with iconic figures, including Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson; and the lasting influence of his writings on Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Muir, Thoreau, and many others. Brilliantly researched and stunningly written, The Invention of Nature reveals the myriad ways in which Humboldt’s ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism—and reminds us why they are as prescient and vital as ever.
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Literature for a Changing Planet
Book Title Literature for a Changing Planet Author(s) Martin Puchner Publisher Princeton University Press Publication Year 2022 ISBN 9780691213750.00 Key Words Humanities; Climate Change Narratives Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner ranges across four thousand years of world literature to draw vital lessons about how we put ourselves on the path of climate change—and how we might change paths before it’s too late.
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The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate
Book Title The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate Author(s) David Archer Publisher Princeton University Press Publication Year 2016 ISBN 9780691169064.00 Key Words Paleoclimatology; Geology Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary The human impact on Earth’s climate is often treated as a hundred-year issue lasting as far into the future as 2100, the year in which most climate projections cease. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, reveals the hard truth that these changes in climate will be “locked in,” essentially forever.
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The Marrow Thieves
Book Title The Marrow Thieves Author(s) Cherie Dimaline Publisher Cormorant Books Incorporated; DCB Publication Year 2017 ISBN 978-1770864863 Key Words fiction; dystopia, science fiction Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden — but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
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Merchants of Doubt
Book Title Merchants of Doubt Author(s) Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway Publisher Bloomsbury Publication Year 2010 ISBN 9781608193943.00 Key Words Role of Science in Society; Politics of Science; history of science Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Merchants of Doubt tells the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. The same individuals who claim the science of global warming is “not settled” have also denied the truth about studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one tobacco executive. These “experts” supplied it. Merchants of Doubt rolls back the rug on this dark corner of American science. Now with a new Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore, and with a new Postscript by the authors.
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Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis
Book Title Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis Author(s) Ann-Christine Duhaime, MD Publisher Harvard University Press Publication Year 2022 ISBN 9780674247727.00 Key Words Neuroscience; Cognitive Science; Climate Change Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary A neurosurgeon explores how our tendency to prioritize short-term consumer pleasures spurs climate change, but also how the brain’s amazing capacity for flexibility can—and likely will—enable us to prioritize the long-term survival of humanity.
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The Ministry for the Future
Book Title The Ministry for the Future Author(s) Kim Stanley Robinson Publisher Orbit Books Publication Year 2020 ISBN 978-0-316-30013-1 Key Words Climate change Recommended by CSSL / LMA campus students Recommendation Summary The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.
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Our Fragile Moment
Book Title Our Fragile Moment Author(s) Michael Mann Publisher Hachette Book Group; PublicAffairs Publication Year 2023 ISBN 9781761380563 Key Words Historical; non-fiction Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary In this sweeping work of science and history, the renowned climate scientist and author of The New Climate War shows us the conditions on Earth that allowed humans not only to exist but thrive, and how they are imperiled if we veer off course. In this book, renowned climate scientist Michael Mann will arm readers with the knowledge necessary to appreciate the gravity of the unfolding climate crisis, while emboldening them—and others–to act before it truly does become too late.
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The Overstory
Book Title The Overstory Author(s) Richard Powers Publisher W.W. Norton and Co. Publication Year 2019 ISBN 9780393356687.00 Key Words Nature; sustainability; storytelling; activism; fiction Recommended by CSSL / LMA campus students Recommendation Summary The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
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The Parable of the Sower
Book Title The Parable of the Sower Author(s) Octavia E. Butler Publisher Grand Central Publishing Publication Year 1993 ISBN 978-1538732182 Key Words novel; graphic novel; dystopian Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyper-empathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.
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Perilous Times
Book Title Perilous Times Author(s) Thomas D. Lee Publisher Random House Publication Year 2023 ISBN 978-0593499016 Key Words Fantasy, Fiction Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet—saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself—in this slyly funny contemporary take on Arthurian legend.
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The Precipice
Book Title The Precipice Author(s) Toby Ord Publisher Hachette Books Publication Year 2021 ISBN 9780316484923.00 Key Words Philosophy; Sociology Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity.
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Principles of Sustainable Finance
Book Title Principles of Sustainable Finance Author(s) Dirk Schoenmaker; Willem Schramade Publisher Oxford University Press Publication Year 2019 ISBN 9780198826606.00 Key Words Social Sciences; Economics; Sustainability; Finance Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Principles of Sustainable Finance explains how the financial sector can be mobilized to counter this. Using finance as a means to achieve social goals, we can divert the planet and its economy from its current path to a world that is sustainable for all.
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Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet
Book Title Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet Author(s) George Monbiot Publisher Penguin Random House Publication Year 2022 ISBN 9780143135968 Key Words non-fiction; agriculture; science Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Regenesis is a breathtaking vision of a new future for food and for humanity. Drawing on astonishing advances in soil ecology, Monbiot reveals how our changing understanding of the world beneath our feet could allow us to grow more food with less farming. He meets the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable grower revolutionizing our understanding of fertility; through breeders of perennial grains, liberating the land from plows and poisons; to the scientists pioneering new ways to grow protein and fat. Together, they show how the tiniest life forms could help us make peace with the planet, restore its living systems, and replace the age of extinction with an age of regenesis.
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The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community
Book Title The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community Author(s) Elizabeth Hoover Publisher University of Minnesota Press Publication Year 2017 ISBN 978-1-5179-0303-9 Key Words Environmental Policy; Environmental Health; Health and hygiene; Native American Studies Recommended by LMA campus students Recommendation Summary In The River Is in Us, author Elizabeth Hoover takes us deep into this remarkable community that has partnered with scientists and developed grassroots programs to fight the contamination of its lands and reclaim its health and culture. Through in-depth research into archives, newspapers, and public meetings, as well as numerous interviews with community members and scientists, Hoover shows the exact efforts taken by Akwesasne's massive research project and the grassroots efforts to preserve the Native culture and lands. She also documents how contaminants have altered tribal life, including changes to the Mohawk fishing culture and the rise of diabetes in Akwesasne.
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Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis
Book Title Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis Author(s) Fredrik Albritton Jonsson; Carl Wennerlind Publisher Harvard University Press Publication Year 2023 ISBN 9780674987081 Key Words Business; Economic History; Capitalism; Political Economy; History; Climate Change Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary A sweeping intellectual history of the concept of economic scarcity—its development across five hundred years of European thought and its decisive role in fostering the climate crisis.
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Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Book Title Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor Author(s) Richard Nixon Publisher Harvard University Press Publication Year 2013 ISBN 9780674072343.00 Key Words activism; nonfiction; environmental justice Recommended by LMA campus students Recommendation Summary In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
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The Swan Book
Book Title The Swan Book Author(s) Alexis Wright Publisher Atria Books; Washington Square Press; Giramondo Publishing Publication Year 2013, 2018, 2023 ISBN 9781472120557 Key Words Fiction; Dystopian; Indigenous Studies Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginal peoples still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city.
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Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit
Book Title Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit Author(s) Josiah Rector Publisher The University of North Carolina Press Publication Year 2022 ISBN 978-1-4696-6576-4 (PB); 978-1-4696-6575-7 (HC); 978-1-4696-6577-1 (EB) Key Words Environmental Studies; Political History; Public Policy; Social Issues; African American Studies Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Toxic Debt is not only a book about racism, capitalism, and the making of these environmental disasters. It is also a history of Detroit's environmental justice movement, which emerged from over a century of battles over public health in the city and involved radical auto workers, ecofeminists, and working-class women fighting for clean water. Linking the histories of urban political economy, the environment, and social movements, Toxic Debt lucidly narrates the story of debt, environmental disaster, and resistance in Detroit.
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The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Book Title The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming Author(s) David Wallace-Wells Publisher Tim Duggan Books; Crown Publication Year 2019, 2020 ISBN 9780525576716 Key Words Science; Domestic Politics Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.
The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s.
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Weather
Book Title Weather Author(s) Jenny Offill Publisher Knopf; Vintage Publication Year 2020 ISBN 9780345806901 Key Words Fiction; Psychology Recommended by faculty / professors Recommendation Summary Lizzie works in the library of a university where she was once a promising graduate student. Her side hustle is answering the letters that come in to Hell and High Water, the doom-laden podcast hosted by her former mentor. At first it suits her, this chance to practice her other calling as an unofficial shrink—she has always played this role to her divorced mother and brother recovering from addiction—but soon Lizzie finds herself struggling to strike the obligatory note of hope in her responses. The reassuring rhythms of her life as a wife and mother begin to falter as her obsession with disaster psychology and people preparing for the end of the world grows. A marvelous feat of compression, a mix of great feeling and wry humor, Weather is an electrifying encounter with one of the most gifted writers at work today.
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What the Eyes Don't See
Book Title What the Eyes Don't See Author(s) Mona Hanna-Attisha Publisher One World Publication Year 2019 ISBN 9780399590856 Key Words Environmental justice, health equity, public health Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary What the Eyes Don’t See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their—and all of our—children.
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World Without End
Book Title World without end Author(s) Jancovici - Blain Publisher Penguin Books Publication Year 2021 - Translation 2022 ISBN 9791032813331 Key Words graphic novel Recommended by LMA campus students Recommendation Summary In this intelligent, eye-opening, and witty international bestseller, an eminent climate expert takes a graphic novelist on a journey to understand the profound changes that our planet is experiencing. The scientist, Jean-Marc Jancovici, explains the workings of superpowers and history; oil and climate; ecology, economics, and energy flows. He describes, in short, the world we live in today--a world whose future is deeply uncertain. The artist, Christophe Blain, intently listens and draws.
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Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
Book Title Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet Author(s) Thich Nhat Hanh Publisher HarperCollins Publication Year 2022 ISBN 978-0062954817 Key Words Buddhism, spirituality, mindfulness Recommended by CSSL Recommendation Summary Mindfulness and the radical insights of Zen meditation can give us the strength and clarity we need to help create a regenerative world in which all life is respected. Filled with Thich Nhat Hanh’s inspiring meditations, Zen stories and experiences from his own activism, as well as commentary from Sister True Dedication, one of his students Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet shows us a new way of seeing and living that can bring healing and harmony to ourselves, our relationships, and the Earth.