The best books for a crash course in our climate choices

Why am I passionate about this?

Typically, climate journalists share stories of disastrous extreme weather events made more extreme by climate change. But over the past decade, I’ve discovered that every sector of the economy and every country on the planet that I’ve had the privilege to explore has people working on climate solutions. Crucially, in many places, these are now working at scale. 


I wrote...

Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age

By Akshat Rathi,

Book cover of Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age

What is my book about?

Our age will be defined by the climate emergency. But contrary to the popular doomist narrative, the world has already begun deploying the solutions to solve it. On a journey across five continents, Climate Capitalism tracks the unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change. 

From the Chinese bureaucrat who did more to make electric cars a reality than Elon Musk to the Indian entrepreneur showing how to deploy solar on a tight budget or the American oil executive building the technology that can reverse climate damage, we meet the people working to scale technologies that are finally able to bend the emissions curve. By bringing together people, policy, and technology, my book reveals how the green economy is possible and profitable. 

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Akshat Rathi Why did I love this book?

This is the story of Alexander von Humboldt and how he influenced our views today about nature. It reveals a grand story hiding in plain sight—a chronicle of one man’s exercise of intellectual freedom that shaped the scientific and political views of Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Simon Bolivar, and Henry David Thoreau. 

By Andrea Wulf,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked The Invention of Nature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD

WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016

'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson

'Dazzling' Literary Review

'Brilliant' Sunday Express

'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist

'A superb biography' The Economist

'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.

His colourful adventures read…


Book cover of The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time

Akshat Rathi Why did I love this book?

This is the one book that explains why humans have become poor at understanding the passage of time and how we can change fast to plan for a shared future.

“Living in the age we do, we have never before had such leverage to shape the trajectory of the future, with so little collective recognition of that fact,” writes Richard Fisher. 

By Richard Fisher,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Long View as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A beautifully turned, calmly persuasive but urgent book' IAN MCEWAN

'A landmark book that could help to build a much brighter future' DAVID ROBSON

A wide-ranging and thought-provoking exploration of the importance of long-term thinking.

Humans are unique in our ability to understand time, able to comprehend the past and future like no other species. Yet modern-day technology and capitalism have supercharged our short-termist tendencies and trapped us in the present, at the mercy of reactive politics, quarterly business targets and 24-hour news cycles.

It wasn't always so. In medieval times, craftsmen worked on cathedrals that would be unfinished in…


Book cover of The Three-Body Problem

Akshat Rathi Why did I love this book?

Science fiction is supposed to be mind-expanding, but its bestsellers have for far too long been in the hands of Western authors.

This book and its accompanying series changed that through interwoven themes that connect an interplanetary future with today’s cultural, climate, and political divides, and the world is a better place for it. 

By Cixin Liu, Ken Liu (translator),

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked The Three-Body Problem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Read the award-winning, critically acclaimed, multi-million-copy-selling science-fiction phenomenon - soon to be a Netflix Original Series from the creators of Game of Thrones.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable…


Book cover of The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Akshat Rathi Why did I love this book?

A series of lectures that shames the literary world for its lack of imagination in weaving the greatest threat humanity faces–climate change–into stories.

Ghosh is a first-rate novelist, but his greatest legacy will be his nonfiction work on climate, colonialism, and migration.

By Amitav Ghosh,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Great Derangement as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the…


Book cover of The Ministry for the Future

Akshat Rathi Why did I love this book?

Robinson’s writing project has been to build utopias, but when faced with the climate crisis, he was forced to come up with an optimal outcome rather than an idealistic one.

It transforms a powerful set of ideas into a compelling human story that will undoubtedly influence the real world as it plays out.

By Kim Stanley Robinson,

Why should I read it?

22 authors picked The Ministry for the Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
 
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…


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Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Michael Bungay Stanier Author Of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Coaching is a wonderful technology that can help people be a force for change… and is often wrapped up in mystic and woo-woo and privilege that makes it inaccessible and/or unattractive to too many. I want being more coach-like—by which I mean staying curious a little longer, and rushing to action and advice-giving—to be an everyday way of being with one another. Driven by this, I’ve written the best-selling book on coaching this century (The Coaching Habit) and have created training that’s been used around the world by more than a quarter of a million people. I’m on a mission to unweird coaching.

Michael's book list on unexpectedly useful books about coaching

What is my book about?

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. Brené Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher, a leader, or even a coach, you can stay curious longer.

By Michael Bungay Stanier,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Coaching Habit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Look for Michael's new book, The Advice Trap, which focuses on taming your Advice Monster so you can stay curious a little longer and change the way you lead forever.

In Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact.

Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how-by saying less and…


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Interested in the United Nations, China, and Germany?

11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about the United Nations, China, and Germany.

The United Nations Explore 22 books about the United Nations
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Germany Explore 477 books about Germany