100 books like Earth's Wild Music

By Kathleen Dean Moore,

Here are 100 books that Earth's Wild Music fans have personally recommended if you like Earth's Wild Music. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time

Christian McEwen Author Of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down

From my list on for taking time to stop and listen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and educator, originally from the British Isles. Perhaps because of this, I am more than usually aware of the distraction and speed of contemporary American life. As a long-time meditator, and the author of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down, I am encouraged and inspired by any book that draws attention to our “hurry sickness” and offers practices or suggestions to help us to slow down.

Christian's book list on for taking time to stop and listen

Christian McEwen Why did Christian love this book?

Jay Griffiths is a gorgeous writer, sparky and original. When I was working on my book, a friend gave me this book, and I gobbled it down. It was definitely the perfect companion along the way: funny, tender, quirky, passionately informed. The back cover features praise by both Fritjof Capra and Gary Snyder. “Amusing and erudite, fascinating and spirited,” says the Times Literary Supplement. “Bravo!”

By Jay Griffiths,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A brilliant and poetic exploration of the way that we experience time in our everyday lives.

Why does time seem so short? How does women's time differ from men's? Why does time seem to move slowly in the countryside and quickly in cities? How do different cultures around the world see time? In A Sideways Look at Time, Jay Griffiths takes readers on an extraordinary tour of time as we have never seen it before.

With this dazzling and defiant work, Griffiths introduces us to dimensions of time that are largely forgotten in our modern lives. She presents an infectious…


Book cover of Fathoms: The World in the Whale

Christopher J. Preston Author Of Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think about Animals

From my list on opening your eyes to wildlife.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born in England but living now in America’s mountain west, I am sucker for landscapes that dance with unusual plants and animals. I have been a commercial fisherman, a tool librarian, and a back-country park ranger. These days, I’m an award-winning public philosopher and author. I have written books and articles about powerful emerging technologies. However, I realized a few years ago that wild animals are an antidote to the technological and commercial forces that can flatten our world. From art painted on cave walls millennia ago to the toys we still give to our children, animals are an important part of human identity. I celebrate this in my work.  

Christopher's book list on opening your eyes to wildlife

Christopher J. Preston Why did Christopher love this book?

How can you not already love these underwater giants? But I didn’t know much about them before reading Gigg’s love letter to our undersea cousins. They live by breathing air and giving birth like we do, but most of their lives takes place in a hidden, watery world.

The horror our species inflicted on whales during commercial whaling became more repulsive as Giggs uncovered the layers of whales’ complexity and sociality. I learned that arthritis sufferers in the nineteenth century would bathe in holes cut into whale carcasses for their curative powers. I also tried to imagine an animal with blood vessels big enough for a child to crawl through and a heartbeat that can be heard through the water for over a mile. 

By Rebecca Giggs,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION
WINNER OF THE NIB LITERARY AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR NONFICTION
HIGHLY COMMENDED IN THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING ON GLOBAL CONSERVATION

A SUNDAY INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR

'There is a kind of hauntedness in wild animals today: a spectre related to environmental change ... Our fear is that the unseen spirits that move in them are ours. Once more, animals are a moral force.'

When Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beach in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of…


Book cover of The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist's Guide to the Climate Crisis

Zoe Weil Author Of The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community, and the World for the Better

From my list on people who want to build a better future.

Why am I passionate about this?

I want to live in a future where all life can thrive. Toward that end, I spend my days teaching and writing about how we can solve the problems we face in our communities and world and build such a future. No surprise then that I read extensively about solutions to problems, looking for those that are visionary while being practical and which truly strive to do the most good and least harm for everyone. As a systems thinker, I’m always looking for books that recognize how interconnected our political, economic, production, food, legal, energy, and other systems are and that offer ideas that will have the fewest unintended negative consequences. 

Zoe's book list on people who want to build a better future

Zoe Weil Why did Zoe love this book?

I’m not a fan of either Doomsday or Pollyanna-ish books, especially in relation to climate change. I’ve read lots of books on this subject, and this is my favorite.

It doesn’t shy away from explaining what’s at stake and what is likely to happen if we don’t stop the escalation of climate-heating gases in our atmosphere, but it offers us a path toward solving this potential catastrophe that we can and must take together.  

By Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Future We Choose as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Everyone should read this book' MATT HAIG
'One of the most inspiring books I have ever read' YUVAL NOAH HARARI
'Inspirational, compassionate and clear. The time to read this is NOW' MARK RUFFALO
'Figueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world' NAOMI KLEIN

*****

Discover why there's hope for the planet and how we can each make a difference in the climate crisis, starting today.

Humanity is not doomed, and we can and will survive. The future is ours to create: it will be shaped by who we…


Book cover of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World

David Rothenberg Author Of The Possibility of Reddish Green: Wittgenstein Outside Philosophy

From my list on to make you want to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.

David's book list on to make you want to change the world

David Rothenberg Why did David love this book?

Like Lisa Wells, I’ve spent years looking up to many possible heroes in my dream of making the world a better place. So much inspiration out there, and yet all our heroes become flawed the more we learn about them. How to remain hopeful when we find out the truth? Only through poetry, art, beauty, intensity. One of the finest books of the year, impossible to categorize.

By Lisa Wells,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Believers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"An essential document of our time." ―Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering

In search of answers and action, the award-winning poet and essayist Lisa Wells brings us Believers, introducing trailblazers and outliers from across the globe who have found radically new ways to live and reconnect to the Earth in the face of climate change

We find ourselves at the end of the world. How, then, shall we live?

Like most of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by increasingly urgent news of climate change on an apocalyptic scale. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes, but…


Book cover of Silence: Lectures and Writings

David Rothenberg Author Of The Possibility of Reddish Green: Wittgenstein Outside Philosophy

From my list on to make you want to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.

David's book list on to make you want to change the world

David Rothenberg Why did David love this book?

From the 1960s but still one of the greatest books on how being creative means trying everything, trusting no one, and listening to everybody and everything. After you read this you will know that you can be an artist, that is, if you are meant to be one.

By John Cage,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Silence, John Cage's first book and epic masterpiece, was published in October 1961. In these lectures, scores, and writings, Cage tries, as he says, to find a way of writing that comes from ideas, is not about them, but that produces them. Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching. Fifty years later comes a beautiful new edition with a foreword by eminent music critic Kyle Gann. A landmark book in American arts and culture, Silence has been translated into more than forty languages and has…


Book cover of Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics

David Rothenberg Author Of The Possibility of Reddish Green: Wittgenstein Outside Philosophy

From my list on to make you want to change the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.

David's book list on to make you want to change the world

David Rothenberg Why did David love this book?

From the guy who came up with the phrase “Occupy Wall Street” is a manifesto for questioning authority and turning the tools of advertising and persuasion against the man. Lasn understood what memes really are before the internet trivialized the concept. He reminds us of the transformational power of simple, clear, addictive ideas.

By Kalle Lasn (editor), Adbusters (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Meme Wars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Engrossing, exciting [...] This book compels us to rethink our approaches to economics ..." 
—Literary Review of Canada

"Thought-provoking and creative" — Julie Nelson, author of Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics

"Meme Wars is a Molotov cocktail tossed into the boardroom. "— Calgary Herald

From the editor and magazine that started and named the Occupy Wall Street movement, Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is an articulation of what could be the next steps in rethinking and remaking our world that challenges and debunks many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics and brings to light a…


Book cover of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

Christopher J. Preston Author Of Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think about Animals

From my list on opening your eyes to wildlife.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born in England but living now in America’s mountain west, I am sucker for landscapes that dance with unusual plants and animals. I have been a commercial fisherman, a tool librarian, and a back-country park ranger. These days, I’m an award-winning public philosopher and author. I have written books and articles about powerful emerging technologies. However, I realized a few years ago that wild animals are an antidote to the technological and commercial forces that can flatten our world. From art painted on cave walls millennia ago to the toys we still give to our children, animals are an important part of human identity. I celebrate this in my work.  

Christopher's book list on opening your eyes to wildlife

Christopher J. Preston Why did Christopher love this book?

Goldfarb’s tribute to the beaver offers a shining example of how to turn an animal’s image around. I will never think of the furry rodent with orange teeth the same again.

Beavers play countless roles in keeping ecosystems healthy. They create insect habitats, shelter endangered salmon, recharge aquifers, and strain ash out of creeks after forest fires. I gained a new appreciation for how the beaver’s engineering prowess makes river systems tick.

By carefully mixing natural history with entertaining personal encounters, Goldfarb informed me and made me laugh. These days, when I see evidence of a beaver on a walk beside a river, I cheer.

By Ben Goldfarb,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

WINNER of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Washington Post "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction"

Science News "Favorite Science Books of 2018"

Booklist "Top Ten Science/Technology Book of 2018"

"A marvelously humor-laced page-turner about the science of semi-aquatic rodents.... A masterpiece of a treatise on the natural world."-The Washington Post

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were…


Book cover of A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry

Mark Yakich Author Of Poetry: A Survivor's Guide

From my list on poems for people who don’t usually read them.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child I did not enjoy reading of any kind, detested English class, and loathed poetry in particular. I simply couldn’t comprehend what relevance poems had to my life. Then, while living overseas, in my mid-twenties in a country in which I didn’t speak the language well and had no friends, I took refuge in an English-language bookstore. There, I would find the slimmest books I could find, which happened to be poetry collections, and I’d pull one down hoping for commiseration. At some point, I realized that I could make certain friends with certain poems. Twenty-five years of growing friendships later, now I read and write poetry for a living.  

Mark's book list on poems for people who don’t usually read them

Mark Yakich Why did Mark love this book?

Czesław Miłosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. But that isn’t the reason to seek out this book. In fact, the book contains none of his poems; it’s an anthology of poems he selected from across the ages and across the globe. The poems are idiosyncratic to Miłosz’s taste—and he has excellent taste, offering us brief personal header notes to guide our reading. Most of the poems are less than half a page long, none more than a page and a half—and some just a handful of lines. These are delicate, thoughtful poems that never become syrupy or stringent. Even after decades of reading poems, I’ve returned again and again to this book when I want to remind myself of why I turned to poetry in the first place.

By Czesław Miłosz,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Book of Luminous Things as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Selected by Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, an inspiring collection of 300 poems from writers around the world.

Czeslaw Milosz's A Book of Luminous Things—his personal selection of poems from the past and present—is a testament to the stunning varieties of human experience, offered up so that we may see the myriad ways that experience can be shared in words and images. Milosz provides a preface to each of these poems, divided into thematic (and often beguiling) sections, such as “Travel,” “History,” and “The Secret of a Thing,” that make the reading as instructional as it is inspirational and remind us…


Book cover of Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

Christian McEwen Author Of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down

From my list on for taking time to stop and listen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and educator, originally from the British Isles. Perhaps because of this, I am more than usually aware of the distraction and speed of contemporary American life. As a long-time meditator, and the author of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down, I am encouraged and inspired by any book that draws attention to our “hurry sickness” and offers practices or suggestions to help us to slow down.

Christian's book list on for taking time to stop and listen

Christian McEwen Why did Christian love this book?

Like me, David George Haskell was born in Britain, and currently lives in the United States. He is a trained scientist, who is also an astonishingly gifted writer. His focus on “sensory extinction” is close to my heart. He understands the joy of listening to the wild music of the world, and also that such music is under siege. In a world of increasing racket and distraction, he recognizes the importance of slowing down. Like Jay Griffiths, he combines deep research with an emphasis on wonder, reverence, and delight.

By David George Haskell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sounds Wild and Broken as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life's sound." -The New York Times Book Review

A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces

We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution's creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt…


Book cover of The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

Christian McEwen Author Of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down

From my list on for taking time to stop and listen.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and educator, originally from the British Isles. Perhaps because of this, I am more than usually aware of the distraction and speed of contemporary American life. As a long-time meditator, and the author of World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down, I am encouraged and inspired by any book that draws attention to our “hurry sickness” and offers practices or suggestions to help us to slow down.

Christian's book list on for taking time to stop and listen

Christian McEwen Why did Christian love this book?

Ursula K.Le Guin is perhaps best known as a novelist and science fiction writer. But her non-fiction is very much worth reading too. I love her values, her courage, her clarity, her persistence. Right to the end of her very long life (she died in 2018 at the age of 88), she was thinking about the art and craft of writing. I find myself deeply inspired and encouraged by Le Guin, and in particular, this book.

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Wave in the Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Join Ursula K. Le Guin as she explores a broad array of subjects, ranging from Tolstoy, Twain, and Tolkien to women's shoes, beauty, and family life. With her customary wit, intelligence, and literary craftsmanship, she offers a diverse and highly engaging set of readings. The Wave in the Mind includes some of Le Guin's finest literary criticism, rare autobiographical writings, performance art pieces, and, most centrally, her reflections on the arts of writing and reading.


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