Best Nature Books

BIOGRAPHIES

• David Attenborough ‘Life On Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster’
• Jane Goodall ‘Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey’
• Edward O Wilson ‘Naturalist’
• Andrea Wulf ‘The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World’

BUSINESS

• Ray Anderson ‘Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose – Doing Business by Respecting the Earth’
• Yvon Chouinard ‘Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman’
• Anita Roddick ‘Business as Unusual: My Entrepreneurial Journey, Profits and Principles’
• Mark Tercek “Nature’s Fortune: How Business And Society Thrive By Investing In Nature”

CITIES

• Michael Bloomberg and Carol Pope ‘Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet’
• Jan Gehl ‘Life Between Buildings’
• Jane Jacobs ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’
• James Howard Kunstler ‘The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape’
• Janette Sadik-Khan ‘Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution’

CLIMATE

• Gwynne Dyer ‘Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats’
• Tim Flannery ‘The Weathermakers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change’
• Jeff Goodell ‘The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World’
• Al Gore ‘An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming’
• Paul Hawken ‘Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming’
• James Hansen ‘Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity’
• Naomi Klein ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate’
• Elizabeth Kolbert ‘Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change’
  Bill McKibben ‘The End of Nature’
• George Monbiot ‘Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning’
• David Wallace-Wells ‘The Uninhabitable Earth: life after warming’

CONSUMERISM

• Rachel Botsman ‘ What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption’
• Oliver James ‘Affluenza: How to be Successful and Stay Sane’

DESIGN

• Janine Benyus ‘Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired By Nature’
• William McDonough and Michael Braungart ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’ ’

ECONOMICS & SUSTAINABILITY

• Herman Daly ‘Steady State Economics’
• Herman Daly and John Cobb ‘For The Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future’
• Thomas L. Friedman ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution’
• Paul Hawken ‘The Ecology of Commerce’
• Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins ‘Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution’
• Richard Heinberg ‘The End of Growth: Adapting to our New Economic Reality’
• Richard Heinberg ‘Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines’
• Tim Jackson ‘Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet’
• Bill McKibben ‘Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future’
• Donella H. Meadows ‘The Limits to Growth’
• Jonathon Porritt ‘Capitalism as if the World Matters’
• Kate Raworth ‘Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist’
• Jeffrey Sachs ‘The Age of Sustainable Development’
• Jeffrey Sachs ‘Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet’
• Juliet Schor ‘Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth’
• E.F. Schumacher ‘Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered’
• Nicholas Stern ‘The Economics of Climate Change’

EDUCATION

• Richard Louv ‘Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder’
• Richard Louv ‘The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age’

ENERGY

• Richard Heinberg ‘Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels’
• James Howard Kunstler ‘The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century’
• Jeremy Leggett ‘The Energy of Nations’
• David Mackay ‘Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air’

FOOD

• Bill Mollison ‘Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual’
• Michael Pollan ‘In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto’
• Michael Pollan ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals’
• John Ratey : “Go Wild”
• Jonathan Safran Foer ‘Eating Animals’
• Joel Salatin ‘Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front’
• Eric Schlosser ‘Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal’
• Karl Weber ‘Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It’
• Dr. Mark Hyman ‘Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities and Our Planet – One Bite at a Time’

JOBS

• Van Jones ‘The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems’

KIDS

• Dr Seuss ‘The Lorax’
• Dr Seuss ‘Horton Hears a Who’
• Oliver Jeffers ‘Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth’
• Shel Silverstein ‘The Giving Tree’

NATURE – CONSERVATION

• Douglas Adams ‘Last Chance to See’
• Elizabeth Kolbert ‘The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History’
• George Monbiot ‘Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life’
• Farley Mowat ‘Never Cry Wolf’
• M R O’Connor ‘Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things’
• David Quammen ‘The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions’
• Edward O Wilson ‘The Diversity of Life’
• Edward O Wilson ‘Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life’

NATURE – CONNECTION

• Barbara Kingsolver ‘Small Wonder’
• Michael Pollan ‘The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World’
• David Suzuki ‘The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature’
• Robin Wall Kimmerer ‘Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants’
• Edward O Wilson ‘Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species’

NATURE – EARTH

• James Lovelock ‘Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth’
• Bill McKibben ‘Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet’
• Carl Sagan ‘Cosmos’
• Alan Weisman ‘The World Without Us’

NATURE – JOURNEYS AND WILDERNESS

• Edward Abbey ‘Desert Solitaire’
• Bill Bryson ‘A Walk in the Woods’
• Jon Krakauer ‘Into the Wild’
• Aldo Leopold ‘A Sandy County Almanac (outdoor essays and reflections)’
• John Muir ‘A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf’
• John Muir ‘Nature Writings’
• Henry David Thoreau ‘Walden; Or Life in the Woods’

NATURE – TREES

• David George Haskell ‘The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors’
• Peter Wohlleben ‘The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries From a Secret World’

OCEANS –

• Rachel Carson ‘The Sea Around Us’
• Sylvia Earle ‘The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One’
• Alanna Mitchell ‘Seasick: The Hidden Ecological Crisis of the Global Ocean’
• Charles Moore and Cassandra Phillips ‘Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans’

POLITICS –

• Bill McKibben ‘American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau’
• George Monbiot ‘Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis’
• Will Potter ‘Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege’
• Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus ‘Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility’

POPULATION –

• Paul R Ehrlich ‘The Population Bomb’
• Jared Diamond ‘Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed’

PSYCHOLOGY –

• Charles Handy ‘The Hungry Spirit: Beyond Capitalism: The Quest for Purpose in the Modern World’
• Jeremy Lent ‘The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning’
• Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway ‘Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth’
• Michael Mann and Tom Toles ‘The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy’
• George Marshall ‘Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change’

WASTE –

• Rachel Carson ‘Silent Spring’
• Annie Leonard ‘The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health’
• Lucy Siegle ‘Turning The Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again’

…to know and not to do is not to know