TOP 50 BOOKS | Climate Change Resources

CCR RECOMMENDS 50 BOOKS

This is a highly curated list of significant books, including:

Rachel Carson’s classic Silent Spring (1962), which set the stage for understanding the impact humans were having on the planet.
Paul Hawken’s Drawdown (2017), which focused on 100 solutions to reverse global warming, 1/3 of which have to do with food, land use or farming.
Gabe Brown’s Dirt to Soil (2018), which tells one farmer’s story who turned his back on conventional agriculture and switched to no-till farming transforming his degraded farm ecosystem into one full of life.
Jonathan Safran Foer’s We Are the Weather (2019), which addresses ourpower to affect climate change through our food choices. Mark Bittman’s review, in the New York Times, is as stunning as the book itself.
Charles Mann’s The Wizard and The Prophet, which tackles the overarching question of how we are going to feed 9.8 billion people in 2050.

We continually question how climate change impacts food and agriculture and how food and agriculture impacts climate change. The titles range from books focusing on what we eat (too much meat) to what we throw away (nearly half of what we buy); on industrial farming as opposed to regenerative farming; on books by fishermen who have turned to kelp farming as the warming of the oceans and the resulting acidification have threatened both their livelihoods and the creatures living in the sea. And, we look at guides – to homesteading on a quarter acre, to “carbon farming,” to creating an eco-friendly home, to regenerating land, storing carbon, and creating climate resilience.

Many of these titles were bestsellers from the time they were published. But, here we are in 2019 and Amazon still doesn’t have a category called climate change and neither does Barnes and Noble.

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FOOD

ANIMAL

OCEAN

PRODUCE

SOIL

WASTE

Books covering multiple subjects will have no icon.

‘The Climate Diet’ Shows How to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint (2021)

By Paul Greenberg. Published by Penguin Books

We all understand just how dire the circumstances facing our planet are and that we all need to do our part to stem the tide of climate change. When we look in the mirror, we can admit that we desperately need to go on a climate diet. But the task of cutting down our carbon emissions feels overwhelming and the discipline required hard to summon.

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half Its Food (And What We Can Do About It) (2011)

By Jonathan Bloom. Published by Da Capo Lifelong Books

Grocery prices and the forsaken foods at the back of your fridge seem to increase weekly. After reading American Wasteland, you will never look at your shopping list, refrigerator, plate, or wallet the same way again. Jonathan Bloom wades into the garbage heap to unearth what our squandered food says about us, why it matters, and how you can make a difference starting in your own kitchen—reducing waste and saving money. Interviews with experts such as chef Alice Waters and food psychologist Brian Wansink, among others, uncover not only how and why we waste, but, most importantly, what we can do about it.

Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment (2011)

By David Kirby. Published by St. Martin's Griffin

Swine flu. Bird flu. Massive fish kills. Concentrations of cancer and other diseases. Recalls of contaminated meats, fruits, and vegetables. Recent public health crises raise urgent questions about how our animal-derived food is raised and brought to market. In Animal Factory, bestselling investigative journalist David Kirby exposes the powerful business and political interests behind large-scale factory farms, and tracks the far-reaching fallout that contaminates our air, land, and water supply―and our food itself.

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal (2021)

By Mark Bittman. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments, from slavery and colonialism to famine and genocide—and to our current moment, wherein Big Food exacerbates climate change, plunders our planet, and sickens its people. Even still, Bittman refuses to concede that the battle is lost, pointing to activists, workers, and governments around the world who are choosing well-being over corporate greed and gluttony, and fighting to free society from Big Food’s grip.

Book Review: “The Carbon Farming Solution” (2020)

By Eric Toensmeier. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing

In this groundbreaking book, Eric Toensmeier argues that agriculture―specifically, the subset of practices known as "carbon farming"―can, and should be, a linchpin of a global climate solutions platform.

Building Soil: A Down-to-Earth Approach: Natural Solutions for Better Gardens & Yard (2015)

By Elizabeth Murphy. Published by Cool Springs Press

How do you recognize healthy soil? How much can your existing soil be improved? What are the best amendments to use for your soil? Let Building Soil answer your questions and be your guide on gardening from the ground up! Fertilizing, tilling, weed management, and irrigation all affect the quality of your soil. Using author Elizabeth Murphy's detailed instructions, anyone can become a successful soil-based gardener, whether you want to start a garden from scratch or improve an existing garden.

Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth (2013)

By Judith D. Schwartz. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing

In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems―climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity―there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.

Defending Beef (2014)

By Nicolette Hahn Niman. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing

For decades it has been nearly universal dogma among environmentalists and health advocates that cattle and beef are public enemy number one. But is the matter really so clear cut? Hardly, argues environmental lawyer turned rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman in her new book, Defending Beef.

Diet for a Changing Climate: Food for Thought (2018)

By Christy Mihaly. Published by Twenty-First Century Books

The United Nations supports a compelling solution to world hunger: eat insects! Explore the vast world of unexpected foods that may help solve the global hunger crisis. Weeds, wild plants, invasive and feral species, and bugs are all food for thought. Learn about the nutritional value of various plant and animal species; visit a cricket farm; try a recipe for dandelion pancakes, kudzu salsa, or pickled purslane; and discover more about climate change, sustainability, green agriculture, indigenous foods, farm-to-table restaurants, and how to be an eco-friendly producer, consumer, and chef.

Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It (2010)⭐

By Anna Lappe. Published by Bloomsbury USA

Nearly four decades after her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, published Diet for a Small Planet, sparking a revolution in our thinking about the social and environmental impact of our food choices, Anna Lappé picks up the conversation, examining another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis. From raising cattle in industrial-scale feedlots to razing rainforests to make palm oil for Pop-Tarts, the choices we make about how we put food on our plates, and what we do with the waste, contribute to as much as one third of total greenhouse-gas emissions. Lappé exposes the interests resisting this crucial conversation while she educates and empowers readers and eaters committed to healing the planet.

Diet for a Small Planet (2021)

By Frances Moore Lappé. Published by Random House Publishing Group

Discover a way of eating that revolutionized the meaning of our food choices and sold more than 3 million copies—now in a 50th-anniversary edition with a timely introduction plus new and updated plant-centered recipes

Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture (2018)

By Gabe Brown. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing

Gabe Brown didn’t set out to change the world when he first started working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota. But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm. Brown―in an effort to simply survive―began experimenting with new practices he’d learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture.

Drawdown (2017)

By Paul Hawken. Published by Penguin Books

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.

Eat for the Planet: Saving the World One Bite at a Time (2018)

By Nil Zacharias, Gene Stone. Published by Harry N. Abrams

In this fascinating new book, authors Nil Zacharias and Gene Stone share new research, intriguing infographics, and compelling arguments that support what scientists across the world are beginning to affirm and uphold: By making even minimal dietary changes, anyone can have a positive, lasting impact on our planet. If you love the planet, the only way to save it is by switching out meat for plant-based meals, one bite at a time.

Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer (2019)

By Bren Smith. Published by Knopf

In Eat Like a Fish, Bren Smith—a restorative ocean farmer—introduces the world of sea-based agriculture, a groundbreaking solution to the global climate crisis.

Eating Animals (2010)

By Jonathan Safran Foer. Published by Back Bay Books

Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is the groundbreaking moral examination of vegetarianism, farming, and the food we eat every day that inspired the documentary of the same name.

Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (2019)

By Timothy A. Wise. Published by The New Press

Reporting from Africa, Mexico, India, and the United States, Timothy A. Wise’s Eating Tomorrow discovers how in country after country agribusiness and its well-heeled philanthropic promoters have hijacked food policies to feed corporate interests.

Food Fights: How History Matters to Contemporary Food Debates

By Charles C. Ludington and Matthew Morse Booker. Published by University of North Carolina Press

What we eat, where it is from, and how it is produced are vital questions in today's America. We think seriously about food because it is freighted with the hopes, fears, and anxieties of modern life. Yet critiques of food and food systems all too often sprawl into jeremiads against modernity itself, while supporters of the status quo refuse to acknowledge the problems with today's methods of food production and distribution.

Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet–One Bite at a Time (2020)

By Dr. Mark Hyman MD. Published by Little, Brown Spark

An indispensable guide to food, our most powerful tool to reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the environment, reform politics, and revive economies, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Mark Hyman, MD—"Read this book if you're ready to change the world" (Tim Ryan, US Representative).

Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger and Climate Change (2015)

By John M. Mandyck, Eric B. Schultz. Published by Carrier Corp.

Food Foolish calls attention to the extraordinary social and environmental opportunities created by wasting less food, as the authors seek to strengthen a global dialogue around unlocking solutions that feed the world and preserve its resources in context of climate mitigation.

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes (2009)

By Mark Bittman. Published by Simon & Schuster

From the award-winning champion of culinary simplicity who gave us the bestselling How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian comes Food Matters, a plan for responsible eating that's as good for the planet as it is for your weight and your health.

For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems (2019)

By Nicole Masters. Published by Bowker

Learn a roadmap to healthy soil and revitalised food systems for powerfully address these times of challenge. This book equips producers with knowledge, skills and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm/ranch profits.

Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (2011)

By Paul Greenberg. Published by Penguin Books

Investigating the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, Greenberg reveals our damaged relationship with the ocean and its inhabitants. Just three decades ago, nearly everything we ate from the sea was wild. Today, rampant overfishing and an unprecedented biotech revolution have brought us to a point where wild and farmed fish occupy equal parts of a complex marketplace.

Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life (2017)⭐

By David Wallace-Wells. Published by Tim Duggan Books

The problem of agriculture is as old as civilization. Throughout history, great societies that abused their land withered into poverty or disappeared entirely. Now we risk repeating this ancient story on a global scale due to ongoing soil degradation, a changing climate, and a rising population. But there is reason for hope. David R. Montgomery introduces us to farmers around the world at the heart of a brewing soil health revolution that could bring humanity’s ailing soil back to life remarkably fast. Growing a Revolution draws on visits to farms in the industrialized world and developing world to show that a new combination of farming practices can deliver innovative, cost-effective solutions to problems farmers face today. Read a book review on Resilience.

Holistic Management Handbook Third Edition: Regenerating Your Land and Growing Profits (2016)

By Allan Savory. Published by Island Press

Fossil fuels and livestock grazing are often targeted as major culprits behind climate change and desertification. But Allan Savory, cofounder of the Savory Institute, begs to differ. The bigger problem, he warns, is our mismanagement of resources. Livestock grazing is not the problem; it’s how we graze livestock. If we don’t change the way we approach land management, irreparable harm from climate change could continue long after we replace fossil fuels with environmentally benign energy sources.

Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World (2018)

By Josh Tickell, Terry Tamminen. Published by Atria/Enliven Books

From Josh Tickell, one of America’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers, comes a “fascinating, easy-to-follow blueprint for how eating in ways that nourish and regenerate the soil can not only help reverse global warming, but also bring greater vitality to our lives” (Wolfgang Puck).

Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World (2017)

By Seth M. Siegel. Published by Griffin

Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also had an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors-the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan-every day.

Letters to a Young Farmer: On Food, Farming, and Our Future (2017)

By Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Published by Princeton Architectural Press

Letters to a Young Farmer is for everyone who appreciates good food grown with respect for the earth, people, animals, and community. Three dozen esteemed writers, farmers, chefs, activists, and visionaries address the highs and lows of farming life—as well as larger questions of how our food is produced and consumed—in vivid and personal detail.

Local: The New Face of Food and Farming in America (2014)

By Douglas Gayeton. Published by Harper Design

Combining stunning visuals with insights and a lexicon of more than 200 agricultural terms explained by today’s thought leaders, Local showcases and explores one of the most popular environmental trends: rebuilding local food movements.

My Zero-Waste Kitchen: Easy Ways to Eat Waste Free (2017)

By Kate Turner. Published by DK

Live sustainably and embrace the three R's: reduce, reuse, and recycle. In My Zero-waste Kitchen, find creative and unexpected ways to eliminate trash, save money, and give leftovers a new life. Plus, learn how to grow your own vegetables and herbs from scraps, and how to nourish your plants with compost.

Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need (2021)

By Michael P. Hoffmann and Carrie Koplinka-Loehr. Published by Comstock Publishing Associates

Our Changing Menu unpacks the increasingly complex relationships between food and climate change. Whether you're a chef, baker, distiller, restaurateur, or someone who simply enjoys a good pizza or drink, it's time to come to terms with how climate change is affecting our diverse and interwoven food system.

Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey Hardcover (2021)

By James Rebanks. Published by Custom House

The Acclaimed International Bestseller * Named "Nature Book of the Year" by the Sunday Times (London) * Shortlisted for the the Orwell Prize and the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. "A MASTERPIECE. ... A poetic, practical, raw, and almost miraculously detailed picture of this ancient way of life struggling to survive and to be reborn." ―New Statesman

Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans (2012)

By Charles Moore, Cassandra Phillips. Published by Avery

The researcher who discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—and remains one of today's key advocates for plastic pollution awareness—inspires a fundamental rethinking of the modern Plastic Age.

Project Animal Farm: An Accidental Journey into the Secret World of Farming and the Truth About Our Food (2016)

By Sonia Faruqi. Published by Pegasus Books

Driven by impulsive will and searing passion, Sonia left behind everything she knew and loved to search the planet for solutions to benefit animals, human health, and the environment. Over the course of living with farmers, hitchhiking with strangers, and risking her life, she developed surprising insights and solutions―both about the food industry and herself.

Protecting Pollinators: How to Save Creatures That Feed Our World (2019)

By Jodi Helmer. Published by Island Press

We should thank a pollinator at every meal. These diminutive creatures fertilize a third of the crops we eat. Yet half of the 200,000 species of pollinators are threatened. Birds, bats, insects, and many other pollinators are disappearing, putting our entire food supply in jeopardy. In North America and Europe, bee populations have already plummeted by more than a third and the population of butterflies has declined 31 percent.

Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman (2017) ⭐

By Mariam Horn. Published by W.W. Norton & Company

Unfolding as a journey down the Mississippi River, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman tells the stories of five representatives of this stewardship movement: a Montana rancher, a Kansas farmer, a Mississippi river man, a Louisiana shrimper, and a Gulf fisherman. In exploring their work and family histories and the essential geographies they protect, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman challenges pervasive and powerful myths about American and environmental values.

Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes (2021)

By H. Scott Butterfield, T. Rodd Kelsey, Abigail K. Hart Published by Island Press

Rewilding is a hot topic these days, getting a lot of attention in both the popular press (Monbiot 2014) and scientific community (Fernández et al. 2017). There has even been debate about whether the idea is a good one, ecologically and financially speaking (Rubenstein and Rubenstein 2016). It can mean different things to different people.

Silent Spring (1962)⭐

By Rachel Carson. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed book with a new introduction by the author and activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by the acclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the story of Carson"s courageous defense of her truths in the face of ruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in 1964.

Silvopasture: A Guide to Managing Grazing Animals, Forage Crops, and Trees in a Temperate Farm Ecosystem (2018)

By Steve Gabriel. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing

A system for regenerating land, storing carbon, and creating climate resilience. The concept of silvopasture challenges our notions of both modern agriculture and land use. For centuries, European settlers of North America have engaged in practices that separate the field from the forest, and even the food from the animal. Silvopasture systems integrate trees, animals, and forages in a whole-system approach that offers a number of benefits to the farmer and the environment. Such a system not only offers the promise of ecological regeneration of the land, but also an economical livelihood and even the ability to farm extensively while buffering the effects of a changing climate: increased rainfall, longer droughts, and more intense storm events.

Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us (2019)

By Ruth Kassinger. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In Slime we’ll meet the algae innovators working toward a sustainable future: from seaweed farmers in South Korea, to scientists using it to clean the dead zones in our waterways, to the entrepreneurs fighting to bring algae fuel and plastics to market.

Stronghold: One Man’s Quest to Save the World’s Wild Salmon (2019)

By Tucker Malarkey. Published by Spiegel & Grau

In the tradition of Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Orchid Thief, Stronghold is Tucker Malarkey’s eye-opening account of one of the world’s greatest fly fishermen and his crusade to protect the world’s last bastion of wild salmon. From a young age, Guido Rahr was a misfit among his family and classmates, preferring to spend his time in the natural world. When the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest began to decline, Guido was one of the few who understood why. As dams, industry, and climate change degraded the homes of these magnificent fish, Rahr saw that the salmon of the Pacific Rim were destined to go the way of their Atlantic brethren: near extinction.

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (2012)

By Raj Patel. Published by Melville House

It’s a perverse fact of modern life: There are more starving people in the world than ever before, while there are also more people who are overweight. To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. It took him from the colossal supermarkets of California to India’s wrecked paddy-fields and Africa’s bankrupt coffee farms, while along the way he ate genetically engineered soy beans and dodged flying objects in the protestor-packed streets of South Korea.

Sustainable Home: Practical projects, tips and advice for maintaining a more eco-friendly household (2018)

By Christine Liu. Published by White Lion Publishing

Sustainable Home is a stylish, inspirational and practical guidebook to maintaining a more environmentally friendly household. Sustainable lifestyle blogger and professional Christine Liu takes you on a tour through the rooms of your home – the living area, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom – offering tips, tricks and 18 step-by-step projects designed to help you lead a more low-impact lifestyle. Whether its by making your own toothpaste, converting to renewable energy sources, reducing your consumption of plastic, growing your own herb garden or upcycling old pieces of furniture, there are numerous ways – both big and small – to make a difference.

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! (2009)

By Carleen Madigan. Published by Storey Publishing, LLC

This comprehensive guide to homesteading provides all the information you need to grow and preserve a sustainable harvest of grains and vegetables; raise animals for meat, eggs, and dairy; and keep honey bees for your sweeter days. With easy-to-follow instructions on canning, drying, and pickling, you’ll enjoy your backyard bounty all winter long.

The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water (2012)

By Charles Fishman. Published by Free Press

The water coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years old and might well have been sipped by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Rather than only three states of water—liquid, ice, and vapor—there is a fourth, “molecular water,” fused into rock 400 miles deep in the Earth, and that’s where most of the planet’s water is found. Unlike most precious resources, water cannot be used up; it can always be made clean enough again to drink—indeed, water can be made so clean that it’s toxic. Water is the most vital substance in our lives but also more amazing and mysterious than we appreciate. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this surprising and mind-changing narrative, water runs our world in a host of awe-inspiring ways, yet we take it completely for granted. But the era of easy water is over.

The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security (2016)

By Eric Toensmeier. Published by Chelsea Green Publishing

Agriculture is rightly blamed as a major culprit of our climate crisis. But in this groundbreaking new book, Eric Toensmeier argues that agriculture―specifically, the subset of practices known as “carbon farming”―can, and should be, a linchpin of a global climate solutions platform.

The Elephant in the Cornfield: The Politics of Agriculture and Climate Change (2015)

By Chris Clayton. Published by Amazon Digital Services LLC

Midwest journalist Chris Clayton examines the conflict in rural America over climate change, farming and the increasing pressures on food production. Clayton's reporting highlights the critical nature of agriculture in the country's struggle over finding direction mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to a more volatile climate. The Elephant in the Cornfield explains rural perceptions of climate change, resistance to the science and the outright push to fight attempts to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World (2019)

By Amanda Little. Published by Harmony

In the fascinating story of the sustainable food revolution, an environmental journalist and professor asks the question: Is the future of food looking bleak—or better than ever?

The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild (2019)

By Thomas D. Seeley. Published by Princeton University Press

Humans have kept honey bees in hives for millennia, yet only in recent decades have biologists begun to investigate how these industrious insects live in the wild. The Lives of Bees is Thomas Seeley’s captivating story of what scientists are learning about the behavior, social life, and survival strategies of honey bees living outside the beekeeper’s hive―and how wild honey bees may hold the key to reversing the alarming die-off of the planet’s managed honey bee populations.

The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food (2019)

By Josh Berson. Published by The MIT Press

A provocative argument that eating meat is not what made humans human and that the future is not necessarily carnivorous.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2007)

By Michael Pollan. Published by Penguin

What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species.

The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution: High-Production Methods for Small-Scale Farmers (2019)

By Andrew Mefferd. Published by New Society Publishers

Learn how to use natural no-till systems to increase profitability, efficiency, carbon sequestration, and soil health on your small farm.

The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution (2020)

By Stephen Heyman. Published by W. W. Norton & Company

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America’s first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

The Reducetarian Solution: How the Surprisingly Simple Act of Reducing the Amount of Meat in Your Diet Can Transform Your Health and the Planet (2017)

By Brian Kateman, Mark Bittman. Published by TarcherPerigee

Brian Kateman coined the term "Reducetarian"—a person who is deliberately reducing his or her consumption of meat—and a global movement was born. In this book, Kateman, the founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, presents more than 70 original essays from influential thinkers on how the simple act of cutting 10% or more of the meat from one's diet can transform the life of the reader, animals, and the planet. This book features contributions from such luminaries as Seth Godin, Joel Fuhrman, Victoria Moran, Jeffrey Sachs, Bill McKibben, Naomi Oreskes, Peter Singer, and others. With over 40 vegan, vegetarian, and "less meat" recipes from bestselling cookbook author Pat Crocker, as well as tons of practical tips for reducing the meat in your diet (for example, skip eating meat with dinner if you ate it with lunch; replace your favorite egg omelet with a tofu scramble; choose a veggie burrito instead of a beef burrito; declare a meatless day of the week), The Reducetarian Solution is a life—not to mention planet!—saving book.

The Regenerative Career Guide (2018)

By Matt Powers. Published by PermaculturePowers123

Written for graduating high schoolers, college students, and adults seeking change, this guide showcases the spectrum of currently available and proven regenerative career and professional educational pathways. See yourself in a new occupation, spreading regeneration as you earn your living. Featuring personal invitations from regenerative leaders like Joel Salatin, Darren Doherty, & Peter McCoy. Find your Niche with The Regenerative Career Guide, and find your path to an abundant future!

The Renewable Revolution: How We Can Fight Climate Change, Prevent Energy Wars, Revitalize the Economy and Transition to a Sustainable Future (2011)

By Sajed Kamal. Published by Routledge

Our environment and society is threatened by fuel shortages, a changing climate and energy wars. In our race for survival we are awakened to the simple truth that the essential condition of sustainability lies in our ability to live within the limits and renewability of natural resources. It invokes within us an urgent need for transition from an obsolete, destructive and unsustainable energy path to a sustainable path of innovation, renewable energy and peace. The good news is that the technology required to make this transition is already available.

The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet (2014)⭐

By Kristin Ohlson. Published by Rodale Books

Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world's soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming.

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food (2015)

By Dan Barber. Published by Penguin

Today’s optimistic farm-to-table food culture has a dark secret: the local food movement has failed to change how we eat. It has also offered a false promise for the future of food. In his visionary New York Times–bestselling book, chef Dan Barber, recently showcased on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, offers a radical new way of thinking about food that will heal the land and taste good, too. Looking to the detrimental cooking of our past, and the misguided dining of our present, Barber points to a future “third plate”: a new form of American eating where good farming and good food intersect. Barber’s The Third Plate charts a bright path forward for eaters and chefs alike, daring everyone to imagine a future for our national cuisine that is as sustainable as it is delicious.

The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change (2004)

By Charles Wohlforth. Published by North Point Press

A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska--their comrades trapped on a floe drifting out to sea--as ice that should be solid this time of year gives way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, sleeping in tents, surviving on frozen chocolate, and measuring the snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo, the snow's reflective ability to cool the earth beneath it.

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World (2019)

By Charles Mann. Published by Knopf

In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book.

We Are The Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (2019)

By Jonathan Safran Foer. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn’t believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response? Read Mark Bittman's review in the New York Times.

Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology (2016)

By Vandana Shiva. Published by North Atlantic Books

Debunking the notion that our current food crisis must be addressed through industrial agriculture and genetic modification, author and activist Vandana Shiva argues that those forces are in fact the ones responsible for the hunger problem in the first place.

Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (2013)

By Bea Johnson. Published by Scribner

Part inspirational story of Bea Johnson (the “Priestess of Waste-Free Living”) and how she transformed her family’s life for the better by reducing their waste to an astonishing one liter per year; part practical, step-by-step guide that gives readers tools and tips to diminish their footprint and simplify their lives.