100 Best Environmental Science Books of All Time

Barack ObamaThe president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)

Bill GatesThe Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert. Climate change is a big problem—one of the biggest we’ll face this century—but it’s not the only environmental concern on the horizon. Humans are putting down massive amounts of pavement, moving species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, and more. Natural... (Source)

Jeff Bezos"In his autobiography, Walmart's founder expounds on the principles of discount retailing and discusses his core values of frugality and a bias for action — a willingness to try a lot of things and make many mistakes. Bezos included both in Amazon's corporate values," Brad Stone writes. (Source)

John KerryI’d start with Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which looked at how pesticide use was harming, and in some cases killing, animals and humans, and really was the first book of its kind to illustrate this environmental destruction. I’ve been so involved in the environment for years and years and that has been a great guideline – it was really the awakening, if you will, to the environmental movement... (Source)

Bill GatesFascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. (Source)

Daniel EkA brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. (Source)

Yuval Noah HarariA book of big questions, and big answers. The book turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind. (Source)

Barry EstabrookMichael Pollan looks at food production through four meals. One is a fast-food meal, the other is an industrial-scale organic meal, then there is a small-scale organic meal and finally he actually goes out and either grows or kills, in the case of the meat, the entire meal himself. That is the narrative. (Source)

Gabriel CoarnaMichael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" --more precisely, the first 3rd of it-- was what first made me realize how badly the Earth, as an ecosystem, is out of balance. (Source)

Tristram StuartHe concludes that there is food out there that tastes good, is good for us and is good for the planet. (Source)

Isabella TreeLeopold wrote that one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. To me, that rings painfully true. (Source)

Mark BoyleI love many books, but I am in love with A Sand County Almanac. (Source)

Mike PhillipsIt speaks to the need for us to recognize we’re just as much a part of this planet as the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us. (Source)

Tobi Lütke[Tobi Lütke recommended this book on the podcast "The Knowledge Project".] (Source)

Kate RaworthIt was a real revelation for me to discover such a different approach to thinking and analysing challenges. (Source)

Mira KirshenbaumA nice overview of how initial conditions lead to patterns that determine what the relationship feels like to the people in it (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Henry DimblebyPollan takes the science of food and shows where it’s been misapplied. (Source)

Jon NajarianI believe both the corona virus and ebola have a bat connection. Scary, but great book on ebola: Hot Zone by Richard Preston https://t.co/jGEjbrB7pZ (Source)

Pierre Haski@ChuBailiang The hot zone, it made my days during SARS in Beijing, a great book! https://t.co/8E8AYgIhp7 (Source)

Bill GatesI found this to be an interesting follow-up to the excellent Guns, Germs, and Steel. It examines the downfall of some of history's greatest civilizations. (Source)

Matthew YglesiasI wanted to get a book on my list that is actually enjoyable to read, so not everything is quite so dry and dull as a narrative. I also wanted to include something that reflects the growing importance of environmental and ecological concerns to progressive politics in America. This is relatively new to the agenda – it’s only been in the last 30 to 35 years. But going forward, one of the most... (Source)

Stefan LessardHe should read this book I’m almost finished with. Jared Diamond is one of my favorite historical authors. https://t.co/f9JLYlsc4v https://t.co/KtPgMZaWen (Source)

Oliver Sacks Fdn.As a writer, Oliver Sacks found gardens essential to the creative process. Check out our year-end newsletter, devoted to some beautiful books by botanist-writers that would make great gifts for all your plant-loving friends. https://t.co/2U8iEv4L1x https://t.co/IK1cgIMJhE (Source)

Sarah TaberYeah that's because most of those books are actually just sanctimonious classists pretending they're trying to fix problems. That's why they're depressing If you want a book that's actually about moving forward, "Braiding Sweetgrass" is FANTASTIC. https://t.co/Drr1tmwhSs (Source)

David George HaskellThrough the stories of four familiar plant species–apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes–he demolishes the erroneous impression that we’re in charge. (Source)

Kenneth CoxYou can’t fail to be fascinated by this exposition of the motivations of plants to cuddle up to humans. One of several excellent Michael Pollan books, it’s a fun read. (Source)

Elizabeth KolbertDavid Wallace-Wells argues that the impacts of climate change will be much graver than most people realize, and he's right. The Uninhabitable Earth is a timely and provocative work. (Source)

Shane ParrishI don't know a lot about climate change, but I'm interested in learning more in this big gnarly topic. Wallace-Wells offers a potential portrait of what could happen, using science to show us how our lives will almost inevitably change. He also explores possibilities for what living in this new world could do to politics, our economy, our health, etc. While outcomes are impossible to know with... (Source)

Jonathan Safran FoerMost of us know the gist, if not the details, of the climate change crisis. And yet it is almost impossible to sustain strong feelings about it. David Wallace-Wells has now provided the details, and with writing that is not only clear and forceful, but often imaginative and even funny, he has found a way to make the information deeply felt. (Source)

Amanda Palmer[Amanda Palmer recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans".] (Source)

Fabrice GrindaI have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. That said here are books I would recommend. (Source)

David GoldbergWhat I really liked about A Short History of Nearly Everything is that it gives an excellent account of a lot of the personalities and the interconnectedness of important discoveries in cosmology and elsewhere. He does such a great job of bringing together our understanding of cosmology, evolution, paleontology, and geology in a very, very fluid way. (Source)

Lexi AlexanderCongrats Doctor Hanna-Attisha. Well deserved. It’s a great book https://t.co/XgoMjECOOW (Source)

Joe GebbiaWas hugely influential. (Source)

Kate RaworthHelped me to reimagine how industry could be designed to work with, rather than against, the cycles of the living world. (Source)

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

Andrew CurryThis is such a depressing book. This is The Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update. A lot of people, what they remember about The Limits to Growth is it was published in 1971 and was completely lambasted by economists, technologists, lots and lots of people. What it has sitting underneath it is a model of the world, a model of the world economy, which links population, food, industrial... (Source)

Jonathon PorrittThis is a report produced in 1972, but it’s still as current now as it was then and is still available today. It was commissioned by the Club of Rome and produced by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. What they did was simply to look at projections for world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion and draw up models of what would happen to the earth in... (Source)

Deborah BlumThat is exactly right – the Galveston Hurricane in 1900. It killed thousands of people. I was just thinking after this latest round of tornadoes what a storm-torn continent we are. But that was the worst of them. There has never been a hurricane like that to hit the United States and essentially to remove a community, destroy a generation living there. (Source)

Neil deGrasse TysonWhich books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] On the Origin of Species (Darwin) [to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. (Source)

Mark KurlanskyIt is one of the most important books written, and I always urge people to read it. (Source)

Darren Aronofsky[Darren Aronofsky recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Gaia VinceField Notes was refreshing, a trailblazer. Kolbert actually went to communities affected, on the frontline of climate change. (Source)

Kate MarvelKolbert gives glimpses into what climate change actually means. She shows the interconnectedness of climate and ecosystems and society. (Source)

Kwame Anthony AppiahFeels at the beginning like a series of short stories, each of which has some important thing about a tree or a kind of tree in it, but also holds some human character. You’d be a very strange person if you came away from this book not caring about what’s happening to the trees. (Source)

Sarah DryI had the experience of having the revelation that the author clearly hoped a reader would have, which is that what appears to be a book about distinct individuals—almost a book of short stories— turns out to be something more complex, in which all the characters are linked through time and space. (Source)

Martha Kearney@omrgriffiths @BBCPM @RobGMacfarlane Great idea. Loved that book. (Source)

Laura Dassow WallsThe book that we love as Walden began in the journal entries that he wrote starting with his first day at the pond. (Source)

Roman KrznaricIn 1845 the American naturalist went out to live in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Thoreau was one of the great masters of the art of simple living. (Source)

John KaagThere’s this idea that philosophy can blend into memoir and that, ideally, philosophy, at its best, is to help us through the business of living with people, within communities. This is a point that Thoreau’s Walden gave to me, as a writer, and why I consider it so valuable for today. (Source)

Maggie KoerthbakerSo I'm reading "Midnight in Chernobyl" because obviously TV viewing needs to come with a syllabus afterwards. https://t.co/bWCLHTy7fq It is very interesting contrasting the fictionalized show, the history book, and the essays meant to debunk aspects of the show. (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Laura Dassow WallsShe’s enacting Thoreau, but in a 20th-century context: she takes on quantum physics, the latest research on DNA and the nature of life. (Source)

Sara MaitlandThis book, which won the Pulitzer literature prize when it was released, is the most beautiful book about the wild. (Source)

Isabella TreeQuammen’s wondrous peregrination of islands takes us on a journey of evolutions and extinctions in order to illustrate how like islands our continents have become. (Source)

Sean B CarrollThe book covers the role that islands have played in our thinking about how nature works. (Source)

TC BoyleA brilliant journalist who can tell scientific stories with the kind of panache you’d expect from a novelist. (Source)

Bill GatesMark Miodownik’s personal and professional obsession, as he explains in his book Stuff Matters, is basic materials we often take for granted such as paper, glass, concrete, and steel -- as well as new super-materials that will change our world in the decades ahead. I’m pleased to report that he is a witty, smart writer who has a great talent for imparting his love of this subject. As a result,... (Source)

Gaia VinceThe End of Nature is the fundamental book about the global planetary change that we’re undergoing. (Source)

Jan ZalasiewiczIt’s beautifully written: it’s poetic, evocative, and creates an air of mystery. (Source)

Barry EstabrookThis book is totally unbiased and very serious at looking for solutions to the global fisheries problem. He picks four iconic fish to use as examples to serve for the whole spectrum. So there is tuna, salmon, cod and sea bass. He doesn’t condemn fish farming outright but he explores ways to do it so that we continue to fish in what is the last wild place where we get our food. (Source)

Helen ScalesGreenberg brings Roberts’s story bang up to date. He answers questions about what we eat today and how that is affecting the ocean. He picks four fish, which in the western world at least are the main species we eat. Those are tuna, salmon, cod and sea bass. It is a fascinating story about how we got hooked on those four species, which he tells from his perspective as an avid angler. (Source)

Caspar HendersonIt’s a beautiful piece. (Source)

Aleks KrotoskiWatts has been looking at the small world phenomenon to identify whether the web itself has shrunk our world, and in fact it hasn’t. (Source)

Rosamund McDougallIt’s a very fast-moving explicit scenario about what might happen on earth to all of us, with each degree of global warming temperature rise. (Source)

Adam HaritanI’m currently reading Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin, which tells the 60-year story of how one industrial company’s pollutants have been linked to various cancers in a small New Jersey town. I chose to read this book because I’m very interested in learning the origin of diseases and cancers within the human body. (Source)

Timothy J. JorgensenIt’s very hard to determine whether the cases are clustered because there’s something in that area causing the cancers, or it is simply a random association of cases. (Source)

Matt GarciaMany see Cronon’s book as ecological studies or environmental history. But what I see is his study of the consequences of raising livestock on the land, the consequences of extracting food from a place . . . in this first book, he also makes clear that livestock agricultural practices, food production practices, have consequences. (Source)

John GreenThis harrowing, compulsively readable, and carefully researched book lays out in clear-eyed detail what Earth's changing climate means for us today, and what it will mean for future generations... It's a thriller in which the hero in peril is us (Source)

Elizabeth KolbertJeff Goodell has taken on some of the most important issues of our time, from coal mining to geoengineering. In The Water Will Come, he explains the threat of sea level rise with characteristic rigor and intelligence. The result is at once deeply persuasive and deeply unsettling. (Source)

Nick PyensonSafina is both a storyteller and a scientist, but his work really pulls at the heart of conservation: what do we know about what we want to protect? And why should we do so? (Source)

Leonardo DiCaprioThom Hartmann seeks out interesting subjects from such disparate outposts of curiosity that you have to wonder whether or not he uncovered them or they selected him. (Source)

Daniel BryanLove @NaomiAKlein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. It makes powerful, compelling arguments for how we can not only combat climate change, but create a more just society in the process. Quotes and ideas in the thread #GreenNewDeal (Source)

Ameer RosicBiomimcry should be mandatory learning when designing decentralized token economies. A must-read book! #Crypto #Nature https://t.co/dPmt0uikwX (Source)

Fred KruppI love this message of hope and empowerment from @CFigueres former UNFCCC executive secretary. This book is exactly what we need. Get your copy today: https://t.co/XwRo3oQw0i https://t.co/VKpoJsZbiE (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Matt HaigA brilliant book. Advocates a world war scale emergency response to climate change. And reminds us how much human behaviour can change for the better when the chips are down and we understand and FEEL like the stakes are high. https://t.co/GekPX3xwN0 (Source)

Matt HaigA brilliant book. Advocates a world war scale emergency response to climate change. And reminds us how much human behaviour can change for the better when the chips are down and we understand and FEEL like the stakes are high. https://t.co/GekPX3xwN0 (Source)