Why am I passionate about this?

Seth Wynes is a climate researcher studying how everyday people can fight climate change more effectively. His work has been featured in media outlets from around the world including The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian. Before pursuing an academic career, Seth was a high school science teacher in England and Northern Quebec, and still draws inspiration for his research from the questions and concerns raised by his students. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.


I wrote

SOS: What You Can Do to Reduce Climate Change - Simple Actons That Make a Difference

By Seth Wynes,

Book cover of SOS: What You Can Do to Reduce Climate Change - Simple Actons That Make a Difference

What is my book about?

Your actions make a difference—even the smallest ones every day. Discover the simple ways to reduce your personal carbon emissions,…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Crossing

Seth Wynes Why did I love this book?

Hundreds of pages into this book is a passage about the detonation of an atomic bomb which you could read and enjoy ten times and yet never catch the historical moment playing out before you. The Crossing is full of these layered, quiet chords that make you question what else you’re missing. No one makes me feel the profoundness of loss that our planet is experiencing more than McCarthy. Already we have lost landscapes and species, yes, but also individual creatures with their own wants and hurts and personalities. McCarthy’s deliberate but gorgeous writing makes you pause and dwell on that loss. In his own words, “Do this and do not let sorrow die for it is the sweetening of every gift.”

By Cormac McCarthy,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy fulfills the promise of All the Pretty Horses and at the same time give us a work that is darker and more visionary, a novel with the unstoppable momentum of a classic western and the elegaic power of a lost American myth.

In the late 1930s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch.  But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico.  With that crossing, he begins an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet ghosts and violence…


Book cover of Parable of the Sower

Seth Wynes Why did I love this book?

I’ve collaborated with many climate scientists who work hard to convey what an overheated planet might look like for everyday people. But the easiest description might simply be to say, “Go read Parable of the Sower.” Here, Octavia Butler’s portrayal of a post-Holocene future is so convincing as to almost make her vision of the future seem inevitable. It is by far the most detailed and plausible depiction of the climate apocalypse I have encountered. But Parable of the Sower doesn’t get caught up in its own world-building. It’s about vulnerable humans sharing what is good in one another when the good in the world has mostly left them.

By Octavia E. Butler,

Why should I read it?

28 authors picked Parable of the Sower as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.

'If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it's one written in the past that has already begun to come true. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published' GLORIA STEINEM

'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI

--

We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.

America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to…


Book cover of The Overstory

Seth Wynes Why did I love this book?

I am not the first to say this, but the glory of this book lies in forever transforming your view of forests. Previously I might have walked through a small glade of trees and felt like I was passing by intricate and beautiful statues. Now I feel like I am interrupting a conversation. The revelation of forests as bustling communities, as cities of interaction and cooperation, has never been conveyed more persuasively. More than that, the book is littered with clever ideas that could each stand on their own as the basis for a Vonnegut novel: a flip-book documenting a tree’s growth over generations, a science fiction short story about aliens that come to earth and treat humans like we treat forests. There is a lot to take in.

By Richard Powers,

Why should I read it?

36 authors picked The Overstory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…


Book cover of The Dharma Bums

Seth Wynes Why did I love this book?

“The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow.” The joy in Kerouac is stumbling along with his absent-minded musings and finding the stretches of poetry that really speak to you. Dharma Bums is spiritual and inward-focused, but the characters spend time in nature, trying to figure out their place in it. It’s the kind of companion that you want to have with you on a canoe trip or sharing space with you on a hammock on a warm fall day. 

By Jack Kerouac,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Published just one year after "On The Road", this is the story of two men enganged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbing into the High Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.


Book cover of The Stone Sky

Seth Wynes Why did I love this book?

The name of the trilogy, Broken Earth, says it all for me. Reading through Jemisin’s descriptions of a fantastical world that is rocky, barren, and volatile engenders a sense of gratitude for the abundance and color of our own planet. The world-building is believable, her characters are rich and the magical mechanics that underwrite existence are creative and fascinating.

By N. K. Jemisin,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD
WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD
WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY
An Amazon Best Book of the Year

The incredible conclusion to the record-breaking triple Hugo award-winning trilogy that began with the The Fifth Season

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.
Essun has inherited the phenomenal power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every outcast child can grow up safe.
For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the…


Explore my book 😀

SOS: What You Can Do to Reduce Climate Change - Simple Actons That Make a Difference

By Seth Wynes,

Book cover of SOS: What You Can Do to Reduce Climate Change - Simple Actons That Make a Difference

What is my book about?

Your actions make a difference—even the smallest ones every day. Discover the simple ways to reduce your personal carbon emissions, proven to work by the latest scientific research. Make impactful changes at home, at work, to how you and your family shop, eat, live. Understand how to use your voice and voting power most effectively too, based on what statistics show really contributes to change. You'll be surprised how much power you have to make a change within your community and your country.

How many actions can you tick off the list in this book to help save our planet?

Book cover of The Crossing
Book cover of Parable of the Sower
Book cover of The Overstory

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The Open Road

By M.M. Holaday,

Book cover of The Open Road

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Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up a fan of an evening news segment called “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” Kuralt spotlighted upbeat, affirmative, sometimes nostalgic stories of people and places he discovered as he traveled across the American landscape. The charming stories he told were only part of the appeal; the freedom and adventure of being on the open road ignited a spark that continues to smolder. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are our annual family road trips, and I still jump at the chance to drive across the country.

M.M.'s book list on following the open road to discover America

What is my book about?

Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific expeditions, and Indigenous peoples–all of whom shape their lives in significant ways.

This is a story of friendship that casts a different look on a time period which often focuses only on wagon trains or gunslingers.

The Open Road

By M.M. Holaday,

What is this book about?

After four years of adventure in the frontier, Win Avery returns to his hometown on the edge of the prairie and tracks down his childhood friend, Jeb Dawson. Jeb has just lost his parents, and, in his efforts to console him, Win convinces his friend to travel west with him―to see the frontier before it is settled, while it is still unspoiled wilderness.

They embark on a free-spirited adventure, but their journey sidetracks when they befriend Meg Jameson, an accomplished horsewoman, lost on the Nebraska prairie. Traveling together through the Rocky Mountain foothills, they run into Gray Wolf, an Arapaho…


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