Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a small agricultural town in California’s Sacramento Valley, and my parents didn’t even consider worrying if I was bored or lonely when I wasn’t at school. Consequently, I spent hours in a nearby vacant lot riddled with anthills watching the ants hustle back and forth and, occasionally, inserting myself in their lives with handfuls of sugar or sticks to block their paths. Pretty sure this is where my interest in science and nature began—and maybe even my interest in cooperation.


I wrote

Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

By Kristin Ohlson,

Book cover of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

What is my book about?

Modern people often have a harsh view of nature, believing that competition reigns supreme and that the flourishing of one…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of One Day at Teton Marsh

Kristin Ohlson Why did I love this book?

Published in 1957, this book is hard to find—but it’s a gem, especially for anyone who likes tromping around wetlands as much as I do.

Carrighar shows how disruption cascades through a pond ecosystem when a storm damages a beaver dam and how all the creatures living there struggle to adapt. Her careful observations of nature and scientific research allow her to show these creatures as real characters—not Disney-like humans with fur or scales, but living beings with will, curiosity, and cleverness. 

By Sally Carrighar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked One Day at Teton Marsh as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The setting for this writing is an actual marsh in the valley of Teton Valley and every creature that is mentioned, every plant, can be seen by anyone visiting Jackson Hole. In the background are lively movements of more than fifty minor characters. Some are an otter, trout, hare, merganser, moose, leech, and snail and beaver. There are 9 fullpage pictures that are sketched.


Book cover of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

Kristin Ohlson Why did I love this book?

This book made my heart both soar and ache.

I follow Renkl’s wonderful writing in the New York Times about the nature in her own neighborhood (and occasionally Southern politics), and Late Migrations is a collection of essays in which she ties together the loss of family with the losses of beloved wildlife.

She wrote such a gorgeous last paragraph about living with grief. “And that’s how I learned the world would go on. An irreplaceable life had winked out in an instant, but outside my window the world was flaring up in celebration. Someone was hearing, ‘It’s benign.’ Someone was saying, ‘It’s a boy.’ Someone was throwing out her arms and crying, ‘Thank you! Thank you! Oh, thank you!’ I tear up every time I read those lines.

By Margaret Renkl,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Late Migrations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Named a "Best Book of the Year" by New Statesman, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and Washington Independent Review of Books

Southern Book Prize Finalist

From New York Times contributing opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family-and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.

Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents-her exuberant, creative mother; her steady,…


Book cover of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge

Kristin Ohlson Why did I love this book?

Whenever I fly across country, I love looking out the window of the plane to watch how water has sculpted the landscape below—especially in undeveloped expanses, where I often see dozens of squiggles from rivers that have changed course.

Erica Gies’s fascinating book gave me an expanded view of the relationship between water and land, even in our modern cities, and introduced me to people who are figuring out new ways of living respectfully with this mighty and essential force.

By Erica Gies,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Water Always Wins as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A hopeful journey around the world and across time, illuminating better ways to live with water. 

Nearly every human endeavor on the planet was conceived and constructed with a relatively stable climate in mind. But as new climate disasters remind us every day, our world is not stable—and it is changing in ways that expose the deep dysfunction of our relationship with water. Increasingly severe and frequent floods and droughts inevitably spur calls for higher levees, bigger drains, and longer aqueducts. But as we grapple with extreme weather, a hard truth is emerging: our development, including concrete infrastructure designed to…


Book cover of Martin Marten

Kristin Ohlson Why did I love this book?

Every time I walk out my front door, there’s a song sparrow that swoops in and perches nearby to peer at me; he’s just as curious about me as I am about him.

Doyle’s novel works that idea into a story about a community, and especially a boy, living in a tiny town near Oregon’s Mount Hood. Humans are part of the community, but there are also legions of wildlife in the forests and streams. Doyle does a great job imbuing one of these creatures, a young marten, with agency and intelligence.

I love the question Doyle poses to his readers: How do we really know what they think or feel?

By Brian Doyle,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Dave is fourteen years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood (or as Dave prefers to call it, like the Native Americans once did, Wy'east). He is entering high school, adulthood on the horizon not far off in distance, and contemplating a future away from his mother, father, and his precocious younger sister. And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms on Wy'east that summer. Martin, a pine marten (a small animal of the deep woods, of the otter/mink family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on…


Book cover of Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

Kristin Ohlson Why did I love this book?

I worry that people don’t hear enough about solutions to the climate crisis, but, thankfully, Paul Hawken and his collaborators lay many of them out in this book.

They focus not on the flashy technologies that often grab headlines—and not just on the reduction of fossil fuels—but on the power of a healthy, living Earth to heal itself. Of course, we need to be partners in this healing, and Hawken illuminates the people, organizations, and approaches that are doing just that.

By Paul Hawken,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A radically new understanding of and practical approach to climate change by noted environmentalist Paul Hawken, creator of the New York Times bestseller Drawdown

Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.

Regeneration describes how an inclusive movement can engage the majority of humanity to save the world from the threat of global…


Explore my book 😀

Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

By Kristin Ohlson,

Book cover of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

What is my book about?

Modern people often have a harsh view of nature, believing that competition reigns supreme and that the flourishing of one individual or group must necessarily come at the expense of others. In Sweet in Tooth and Claw, I argue that nature is instead shaped and knitted together by mutually beneficial relationships, many of which we unwittingly disrupt as we build our homes, expand our cities, divert water, and grow food. 

When we change our guiding metaphor and view nature as predominantly cooperative—and ourselves as cooperators instead of disruptors—we can repair the damage we’ve done to the natural world and pursue mutual thriving. I interviewed scientists, farmers, urban visionaries, and others to show how nature is mostly sweet, not ravenous.

Book cover of One Day at Teton Marsh
Book cover of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
Book cover of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge

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Margot's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse the future, she can never change it.

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The Road from Belhaven

By Margot Livesey,

What is this book about?

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a novel about a young woman whose gift of second sight complicates her coming of age in late-nineteenth-century Scotland

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but…


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