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