From Climate Change to Conservation: Inspiring Environmental Books
Every year people around the world celebrate the beauty of our planet through Earth Day on April 22 and demonstrate support for environmental protection. By taking part in activities like planting trees, cleaning up litter, and taking more eco-friendly forms of transportation, we can help reduce our carbon footprint.
We’ve rounded up some of our favorite books about our planet and ways you can help protect it all year round.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Nature Home comes an urgent and heartfelt call for a new approach to conservation—one that starts in every backyard.
Douglas W. Tallamy’s first book, Bringing Nature Home, awakened thousands of readers to an urgent situation: wildlife populations are in decline because the native plants they depend on are fast disappearing. His solution? Plant more natives. In this new book, Tallamy takes the next step and outlines his vision for a grassroots approach to conservation. Nature’s Best Hope shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. Because this approach relies on the initiatives of private individuals, it is immune from the whims of government policy. Even more important, it’s practical, effective, and easy—you will walk away with specific suggestions you can incorporate into your own yard.
If you’re concerned about doing something good for the environment, Nature’s Best Hope is the blueprint you need. By acting now, you can help preserve our precious wildlife—and the planet—for future generations.
“Tallamy lays out all you need to know to participate in one of the great conservation projects of our time. Read it and get started!” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction
Science, nature, and adventure come together in this riveting account of a solo bike trip along the migratory path of the monarch butterfly.
Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle alongside monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration—a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts.
In Bicycling with Butterflies—praised as “poetic” (Publishers Weekly) and called “a collective cry for climate action” (Booklist)—Dykman recounts her incredible journey. We’re beside her as she navigates unmapped roads in foreign countries, checks roadside milkweed for monarch eggs, and shares her passion with eager schoolchildren, skeptical bar patrons, and unimpressed border officials. We also meet some of the ardent monarch stewards who supported her efforts, from citizen scientists and researchers to farmers and high-rise city dwellers.
With both humor and humility, Dykman offers a compelling story, confirming the urgency of saving the threatened monarch migration—and the other threatened systems of nature that affect the survival of us all.
Deepen your connection to the natural world with this inspiring meditation, “a path to the place where science and spirit meet” (Robin Wall Kimmerer).
In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth?
Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways—from walking barefoot in the woods and reimagining our relationship with animals and trees, to examining the very language we use to describe and think about nature. She invokes rootedness as a way of being in concert with the wilderness—and wildness—that sustains humans and all of life.
In the tradition of Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Mary Oliver, Haupt writes with urgency and grace, reminding us that at the crossroads of science, nature, and spirit we find true hope. Each chapter provides tools for bringing our unique gifts to the fore and transforming our sense of belonging within the magic and wonder of the natural world.
For seasoned spotters and backyard hobbyists alike, this charming guide offers an accessible look at the irresistible world of birding. Wildlife biologist and co-founder of Black Birders Week Danielle Belleny walks readers through the essentials of bird watching, from equipment to locations, offering new ideas for finding avian friends wherever you may be. Engaging profiles of North American bird species, from cardinals and blue jays to raptors and sea birds, are accompanied by whimsical illustrations sure to spark the imaginations of birders from coast to coast. Deeply researched and accessible to enthusiasts of all levels of experience, This Is a Book for People Who Love Birds is an essential addition to every bird lover’s field library.
For amateur mycologists and experienced foragers alike, this delightful guide acts as a welcome to the wonderful world of mushrooms. From the most common and recognizable varieties frequently found in your supermarket aisle or backyard to the rarest, most fantastical offerings that look straight out of a fairytale illustration and everything in between, This Is a Book for People Who Love Mushrooms is a carefully researched, whimsically illustrated primer on a subject that naturalists are discovering more about each year. Accessible to enthusiasts of all levels, it is the perfect gift for the mushroom lover in your life.
Take a stroll to discover the ingredients for a wild apple tarte tatin. Turn the lilac bush found in a vacant lot into a delicious, delicately flavored jelly for your morning pastry. Discover a new way to feast on fresh food. Urban Foraging is a stylish, scrumptious guide to wildcrafting in the city. You’ll learn how to find, identify, harvest, and cook with 50 common wild plants, such as chickweed, dandelion, echinacea, honeysuckle, red clover, and pine. Expert forager Lisa M. Rose shares all the basics necessary for a successful harvest: clear photos that aid identification, tips for ethical and safe gathering, details on culinary uses, and simple recipes will help you make truly fresh, nutritious meals.
Picture a hunter. Who comes to mind? Millionaire playboys or big truck owning folks? Maybe so, but there’s more to it. Because if you love nature, value sustainability, abhor the pollution and inhumanity of factory farms, you could be a hunter in the making. And if you’ve never even considered hunting, The Shotgun Conservationist reveals all the reasons you should. Brant MacDuff makes us rethink who hunts and why. Growing up an animal lover with no hunting background, MacDuff himself would seem an unlikely advocate. Yet a lifelong love of the outdoors and a restless curiosity compelled him to investigate a simple question: is hunting conservation? So convinced, he consistently holds a hunting license in multiple states and gives lectures on the positive impact hunting has on conservation efforts nationwide and around the world.
MacDuff tells the story of how he became a hunter and the colorful characters, big personalities, and firsthand research that helped change his mind. His journey led to a deeper understanding of how hunting protects public lands, supports sustainable ecosystems, encourages biodiversity, and can help bridge social and political divides. Along the way, he introduces us to a new generation of hunters, different from timeworn stereotypes and preconceptions. And who better than MacDuff? A trans man living in Brooklyn, he defies expectations of who hunts and invites people of all backgrounds into the field.
Whether or not you decide to take up hunting, The Shotgun Conservationist provides a new perspective and appreciation for those who do.
Lakes might be the most misunderstood bodies of water on earth. And while they may seem commonplace, without lakes our world would never be the same. In this revealing look at these lifegiving treasures, John Richard Saylor shows us just how deep our connection to still waters run.
Lakes is an illuminating tour through the most fascinating lakes around the world. Whether it’s Lake Vostok, located more than two miles beneath the surface of Antarctica, whose water was last exposed to the atmosphere perhaps a million years ago; Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, the world’s deepest and oldest lake formed by a rift in the earth’s crust; or Lake Nyos, the so-called Killer Lake that exploded in 1986, resulting in hundreds of deaths, Saylor reveals to us the wonder that exists in lakes found throughout the world. Along the way we learn all the many forms that lakes take—how they come to be and how they feed and support ecosystems—and what happens when lakes vanish.
From a former New York Times science writer, this urgent call to action—updated for paperback with a new preface and afterword—will empower you to stand up to climate change and environmental pollution by making simple but impactful everyday choices.
With urgency and wit, Tatiana Schlossberg explains that far from being only a distant problem of the natural world created by the fossil fuel industry, climate change is all around us, all the time, lurking everywhere in our convenience-driven society, all without our realizing it.
By examining the unseen and unconscious environmental impacts in four areas-the Internet and technology, food, fashion, and fuel – Schlossberg helps readers better understand why climate change is such a complicated issue, and how it connects all of us: How streaming a movie on Netflix in New York burns coal in Virginia; how eating a hamburger in California might contribute to pollution in the Gulf of Mexico; how buying an inexpensive cashmere sweater in Chicago expands the Mongolian desert; how destroying forests from North Carolina is necessary to generate electricity in England.
Cataloging the complexities and frustrations of our carbon-intensive society with a dry sense of humor, Schlossberg makes the climate crisis and its solutions interesting and relevant to everyone who cares, even a little, about the planet. She empowers readers to think about their stuff and the environment in a new way, helping them make more informed choices when it comes to the future of our world.
Most importantly, this is a book about the power we have as voters and consumers to make sure that the fight against climate change includes all of us and all of our stuff, not just industry groups and politicians. If we have any hope of solving the problem, we all have to do it together.
“A compelling-and illuminating-look at how our daily habits impact the environment.”—Vanity Fair
“If you’re looking for something to cling to in what often feels like a hopeless conversation, Schlossberg’s darkly humorous, knowledge-is-power, eyes-wide-open approach may be just the thing.”—Vogue
“Shows how even the smallest decisions can have profound environmental consequences.”–The New York Times
The book combines intensive research with keenly observed personal experiences to present a portrait of Americans devoted to the natural diversity and spectacular uniqueness of our country. It also includes an extensive guide on where and how readers can get involved.
A “fantastically informative” exploration of the hummingbird from an acclaimed natural history writer that is “exceedingly well-researched and packed with fascinating lore” (Wall Street Journal)
Hummingbirds are a glittering, sparkling collective of over three hundred wildly variable species. For centuries, they have been revered by indigenous Americans, coveted by European collectors, and admired worldwide for their metallic plumage and immense character. Yet they exist on a knife-edge, fighting for survival in boreal woodlands, dripping cloud forests, and subpolar islands. They are, perhaps, the embodiment of evolution’s power to carve a niche for a delicate creature in even the harshest of places.
Traveling from the cusp of the Arctic Circle to near-Antarctic islands, acclaimed nature writer Jon Dunn encounters birders, scientists, and storytellers in his quest to find these beguiling creatures, immersing us in the world of one of Earth’s most charismatic bird families.