Recommended Reads

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical--and accessible--plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.

He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions--suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.

As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

“A timely and much needed call to plant, protect, and delight in these diverse, life-giving giants.” —David George Haskell, author of The Forest Unseen and The Songs of Trees

With Bringing Nature Home, Doug Tallamy changed the conversation about gardening in America. His second book, the New York Times bestseller Nature’s Best Hope, urged homeowners to take conservation into their own hands. Now, he is turning his advocacy to one of the most important species of the plant kingdom—the mighty oak tree.
 
Oaks sustain a complex and fascinating web of wildlife. The Nature of Oaks reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. From woodpeckers who collect and store hundreds of acorns for sustenance to the beauty of jewel caterpillars, Tallamy illuminates and celebrates the wonders that occur right in our own backyards. He also shares practical advice about how to plant and care for an oak, along with information about the best oak species for your area.
 
The Nature of Oaks will inspire you to treasure these trees and to act to nurture and protect them.
 

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.
 

Eco gardening can lessen our overconsumption of natural resources, reduce waste, cut energy use, and make a positive contribution to reducing our carbon footprint. Each page of this planet-friendly book is bursting with ideas for creating your own eco garden on any scale from a small courtyard to a large garden or allotment. Find out how to make soil-building compost from kitchen and household waste, how to save energy by harvesting rainwater, and how to utilise sunlight in your garden. Discover organic techniques that improve biodiversity and attract pest-eating animals and insects. Learn the value of using recycled and reclaimed materials for landscaping. Six eco garden 'greenprints' are packed with environmentally friendly ideas. Simple projects include making a pond and a wildlife hotel, turning a lawn into a wildflower meadow, and planting a 'fedge'. Packed with practical advice and 500 photographs, this book is for everyone who wants a beautiful, productive backyard that won't cost the earth.

Take practical steps to protect the Earth for future generations by creating a sustainable home landscape that is also beautiful, budget-friendly, and low-maintenance.

In this updated edition of Grow More With Less, author and horticulturist Vincent Simeone shows us that gardens are living laboratories where we can experiment, grow, and connect with other living things. There are tens of millions of gardeners across the globe. Together, we can create a huge and lasting positive impact on the planet and all the creatures who share it with us.

With the well-researched plan found in the pages of Sustainable Gardening, gardeners and homeowners are taught how to:

• Grow more plants while using fewer resources
• Conserve water through plant choice and proper landscape care
• Stop the disposable mindset
• Mitigate the effects of climate change through intelligent landscaping
• Plan and plant with low-maintenance in mind
• Build healthy soil to sequester carbon and grow healthier plants
• Create a garden that supports wildlife and soil life
• Design your garden for resiliency and a long, healthy life
• Banish synthetic pesticides and herbicides for more eco-friendly choices
• Reduce plastic waste in the garden and the landfill
• Set your garden on a schedule to reduce maintenance needs
• Harvest rainwater for future use
• Adopt a sustainable lawn care program that requires less work and fewer resources

Plus, discover profiles of some of the best shrubs, perennials, and ornamental grasses to include in your sustainable landscape. Not only are they beautiful and low-care, they also provide valuable ecosystem services.

Sustainability is defined as the capacity to endure, and while the term sustainability may seem a bit overused these days, the truth is that there are few other words that convey the same message. Adaptablity and resilience are close, but they miss the mark in conveying the long-term aspects of true sustainability. Being more mindful of your actions and learning how everything you do in your landscape impacts the ecosystem found there generates a more thoughtful and responsible approach to gardening we all would be wise to adopt.

A vegetable garden is not an option for everyone, and so container growing has become desirable for people with little outside space

Many have discovered the love of growing houseplants and want to take their skills to another level; others are inspired by the idea of growing their own food organically and sustainably. The book covers all the essentials of growing a range of edible plants in pots, and meeting each crop's specific needs.

Author Claire Ratinon brings her urban food growing expertise to this popular subject, in a book designed to appeal to new gardeners and anyone who would like to take on the rewarding challenge of growing their own dinner, even if they've only got a window box or balcony to work with.

Written by a remarkable family and told through the voice of an iconoclastic mother, Our House Is on Fire is the story of how they fought their problems at home by taking global action. And it is the story of how Greta decided to go on strike from school, igniting a worldwide rebellion

From bestselling author James Raffan comes an enlightening and original story about a polar bear’s precarious existence in the changing Arctic, reminiscent of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce.

Nanurjuk, “the bear-spirited one,” is hunting for seals on Hudson Bay, where ice never lasts more than one season. For her and her young, everything is in flux.

From the top of the world, Hudson Bay looks like an enormous paw print on the torso of the continent, and through a vast network of lakes and rivers, this bay connects to oceans across the globe. Here, at the heart of everything, walks Nanurjuk, or Nanu, one polar bear among the six thousand that traverse the 1.23 million square kilometers of ice and snow covering the bay.

For millennia, Nanu’s ancestors have roamed this great expanse, living, evolving, and surviving alongside human beings in one of the most challenging and unforgiving habitats on earth. But that world is changing. In the Arctic’s lands and waters, oil has been extracted—and spilled. As global temperatures have risen, the sea ice that Nanu and her young need to hunt seal and fish has melted, forcing them to wait on land where the delicate balance between them and their two-legged neighbors has now shifted.

This is the icescape that author and geographer James Raffan invites us to inhabit in Ice Walker. In precise and provocative prose, he brings readers inside Nanu’s world as she treks uncertainly around the heart of Hudson Bay, searching for nourishment for the children that grow inside her. She stops at nothing to protect her cubs from the dangers she can see—other bears, wolves, whales, human beings—and those she cannot.

By focusing his lens on this bear family, Raffan closes the gap between humans and bears, showing us how, like the water of the Hudson Bay, our existence—and our future—is tied to Nanu’s. He asks us to consider what might be done about this fragile world before it is gone for good. Masterful, vivid, and haunting, Ice Walker is an utterly unique piece of creative nonfiction and a deeply affecting call to action.

An enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever, social birds of prey called caracaras, which puzzled Darwin, fascinate modern-day falconers, and carry secrets of our planet's deep past in their family history.

In 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that were "tame and inquisitive . . . quarrelsome and passionate," and so insatiably curious that they stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story, but he set this mystery aside and never returned to it.

Almost two hundred years later, Jonathan Meiburg takes up this chase. He takes us through South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana, in search of these birds: striated caracaras, which still exist, though they're very rare. He reveals the wild, fascinating story of their history, origins, and possible futures. And along the way, he draws us into the life and work of William Henry Hudson, the Victorian writer and naturalist who championed caracaras as an unsung wonder of the natural world, and to falconry parks in the English countryside, where captive caracaras perform incredible feats of memory and problem-solving. A Most Remarkable Creature is a hybrid of science writing, travelogue, and biography, as generous and accessible as it is sophisticated, and absolutely riveting.

In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations--how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an annual basis--is nothing short of extraordinary.

Bird migration entails almost unfathomable endurance, like a sparrow-sized sandpiper that will fly nonstop from Canada to Venezuela--the equivalent of running 126 consecutive marathons without food, water, or rest--avoiding dehydration by "drinking" moisture from its own muscles and organs, while orienting itself using the earth's magnetic field through a form of quantum entanglement that made Einstein queasy. Crossing the Pacific Ocean in nine days of nonstop flight, as some birds do, leaves little time for sleep, but migrants can put half their brains to sleep for a few seconds at a time, alternating sides--and their reaction time actually improves.

These and other revelations convey both the wonder of bird migration and its global sweep, from the mudflats of the Yellow Sea in China to the remote mountains of northeastern India to the dusty hills of southern Cyprus. This breathtaking work of nature writing from Pulitzer Prize finalist Scott Weidensaul also introduces readers to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.

Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork, in A World on the Wing Weidensaul unveils with dazzling prose the miracle of nature taking place over our heads.

Cut back on waste and reduce your carbon footprint by going (almost) zero waste with these 100 tips on how to be less wasteful in your home and your community.

In a perfect world, we would all be able to fit a year’s worth of waste in a mason jar. But for most of us​,​ doing so can be immensely intimidating or simply not feasible.

In ​The (Almost) Zero Waste Guide​,​ author Melanie Mannarino shares 100 simple tips for being less wasteful w​ith what​ you eat, ​how you live in​​ your home, when you’re curating your wardrobe, when you practice self-care, during your travels​ near and far​, and in your community. What’s more, she even advises on how you can reduce your “unseen” waste—such as purchasing clothes with more sustainable fabrics and adopting a “Meatless Monday” regimen to help decrease your carbon footprint.

If you’re someone who wants to reduce waste in your daily life and make a positive impact on the planet ​without​ mak​ing​​ drastic changes in your habits, then look no further. This highly accessible and practical guide will have you living a greener, more sustainable life that is (almost) zero waste in no time!

Don't just worry about climate change--take action against climate change! There are many simple things you can do today to make a difference.

Every Day Is Earth Day is full of simple ways to reduce your environmental impact. From tips on creating a more eco-friendly home and ways to reduce your plastic use, to advice on shopping sustainably, within these pages you will discover everything you need to know to help you make planet-friendly choices and live a more sustainable life. Read it, do it, and share it with others!

Printed on 100% Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity's transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?

"A superb and honest reflection of our extraordinary time."--Nature

That man should have dominion "over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it's said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a super coral that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.

One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

From the environmental activist, consumer advocate, renowned crusader, and champion fighter whose courageous case against Pacific Gas and Electric was dramatized in the Oscar-winning film--a book to inspire change that looks at our present situation with water and reveals the imminent threats to our most precious, essential element as it shows us how, in large and practical ways, we can each take action to make changes in our cities, our towns, and our villages before it is too late.

In Erin Brockovich's long-awaited book--her first to reckon with conditions on our planet--she makes clear why we are in the trouble we're in and warns us that if we're waiting for someone to save us, Superman isn't coming. Nor is the government or the environmental agencies. No one is going to solve this for us. It is up to us, we the people, and Brockovich shows us how.

She shows us what's at stake (the average American uses nearly one hundred gallons of water each day, for everything from drinking to cooking to bathing), writing of the unreported cancer clusters, of plastic pollutants in our tap water (we produce more than three hundred million tons annually of plastic in the world, and half of all plastics created for disposable items such as water bottles), of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues.

She identifies and describes the most toxic chemicals in everyday products, from shampoos and baby lotions to cell phones and Tupperware, with only a few hundred under regulation, among them asbestos, lead, mercury, radon, and formaldehyde.

She describes the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and how her work in Hinckley, California, far from being a oneoff situation, opened up a rabbit hole bigger than anyone could have imagined, leading Brockovich to all of our backyards. We see the communities and people with whom she has worked and who have helped to make an impact: the water operator in Poughkeepsie, New York, who changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country; the moms in Hannibal, Missouri, who became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water; the woman in Tonganoxie (Tongie), Kansas, who fought to keep a massive, $320 million Tyson chicken processing complex out of her town (population: 5,300).

Throughout, Brockovich, ever inspiring, empowers us, urging us to act on what we know is right: to ask questions, to scrutinize our water professionals; showing us ways to protect our health, our families, and our lives; to storm our city halls, to use local media, town hall meetings, etc., until our water is safe for everyone to drink. Whether we have PhDs, or degrees in science or in law; whether we're politicians, or government or agency officials, Brockovich shows us how we can each take baby steps to make a difference that can, and will, and must change the world.

A bold, science-based corrective to the groundswell of misinformation about food and how it's produced, examining in detail local and organic food, food companies, nutrition labeling, ethical treatment of animals, environmental impact, and every other aspect from farm to table

Consumers want to know more about their food--including the farm from which it came, the chemicals used in its production, its nutritional value, how the animals were treated, and the costs to the environment. They are being told that buying organic foods, unprocessed and sourced from small local farms, is the most healthful and sustainable option. Now, Robert Paarlberg reviews the evidence and finds abundant reason to disagree. He delineates the ways in which global food markets have in fact improved our diet, and how "industrial" farming has recently turned green, thanks to GPS-guided precision methods that cut energy use and chemical pollution. He makes clear that America's serious obesity crisis does not come from farms, or from food deserts, but instead from "food swamps" created by food companies, retailers, and restaurant chains. And he explains how, though animal welfare is lagging behind, progress can be made through continued advocacy, more progressive regulations, and perhaps plant-based imitation meat. He finds solutions that can make sense for farmers and consumers alike and provides a road map through the rapidly changing worlds of food and farming, laying out a practical path to bring the two together.