Here are 100 books that Ideas to Postpone the End of the World fans have personally recommended if you like
Ideas to Postpone the End of the World.
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Growing up in Philadelphia, with school and family visits to landmarks like Independence Hall and Betsy Ross’s house, I’ve long been interested in American history. That led me, eventually, to graduate school and my profession as a historian. At the same time, I have greatly enjoyed reading American novelists, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Willa Cather, and James Baldwin, as well as the works of thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. DuBois. The sweet spot combining those two interests has been American intellectual history.
This is my candidate for the Great American Novel. Read it for its storyline and its fascinating chapters on whales. Along the way, you’ll encounter discussions about race, religion, friendship, and the virtuous life.
Some of my students ask, “Why does Melville digress so much?” My response: persist in reading this work. What at first seems extraneous becomes vital. You’ll discover a masterpiece.
Melville's tale of the whaling industry, and one captain's obsession with revenge against the Great White Whale that took his leg. Classics Illustrated tells this wonderful tale in colourful comic strip form, offering an excellent introduction for younger readers. This edition also includes a biography of Herman Melville and study questions, which can be used both in the classroom or at home to further engage the reader in the work at hand.
I’m an Irish novelist and poet. Fiction writers are perhaps better described by their fascinations than by any expertise as such. I can’t claim to be an expert in anything, but I am easily fascinated. My educational background is in philosophy, but I’ve always had a tremendous interest in the natural world too, and my writing tends to reflect that. When it comes to fiction, I love books that throw new layers on old surfaces. With nonfiction, I love anything that can explain something. Nonfiction loves to adorn itself with fiction, while fiction tends to cling to nonfiction like flesh on a bone. So my list is mostly bones, and one big sea pearl.
Science fiction envisions the future. The best way to imagine future change is to look at how and when change occurred in the past.
The drivers seldom change: climate, war, and famine. None of those indicators are looking particularly good for humanity right now. Dudley Young’s masterful, poetic, and irreverent scholarly work about the origins of the sacred in human history is the most enjoyable and rewarding book I have read on human evolution and development. So many things began to make sense to me after reading it.
Young is a steamroller of a writer, sloshing through millions of years of paleontology and thousands of years of early human culture with the same vim and swagger as he does Yeats’ poetry (his field of expertise)—and all in wonderful prose.
Tracing the origins of mankind's identity through evolutionary biology and mythological literature, Dudley Young examines the primitive mind and the development of religion and sacredness as seen through our ancestors. Attempting to unearth the origins of violence and to answer the question "Are we born violent?", Young begins millions of years ago, with the transformation of the arboreal monkey into a chimpanzee. As man's brain grew and became more advanced, his most basic instincts - sex and violence - became unharnessed and unprogrammed at the same time that human civilisation emerged. The book concludes on a tragic theme, with the…
A house plant in my living room attacked another plant, wrapping itself around it and killing it. Then another plant tried to sink roots into a neighbor. I began to do a little research, then a lot of research, and learned that plants accomplish amazing feats. They can tell by the angle of the sun when spring is coming, and they can call parasitic wasps to rid themselves of caterpillars. Plants vastly outweigh and outnumber animals, so they run this planet. What if, on another planet, they could think like us… and that’s why I wrote a novel.
If you don’t know much about what plants can do, this is a great place to start.
Learn what a plant sees, smells, and feels. Yes, they can do all that. They know what color shirt you’re wearing. They can smell the warning from a neighbor plant being eaten by a bug. They know when you touch them. They know where they are, and they remember things. Plants are not passive, and they are acutely aware of the world around them.
How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it feel an insect's spindly legs? How do flowers know when it's spring? Can they actually remember the weather? And do they care if you play them Led Zeppelin or Bach? From Darwin's early fascination with stems and vines to "Little Shop of Horrors", we have always marvelled at plant diversity and form. Now, in "What a Plant Knows", the renowned biologist Daniel Chamovitz presents an intriguing and refreshing look at how plants experience the world. Highlighting the latest research in plant science, he takes us into the lives…
I’m an Irish novelist and poet. Fiction writers are perhaps better described by their fascinations than by any expertise as such. I can’t claim to be an expert in anything, but I am easily fascinated. My educational background is in philosophy, but I’ve always had a tremendous interest in the natural world too, and my writing tends to reflect that. When it comes to fiction, I love books that throw new layers on old surfaces. With nonfiction, I love anything that can explain something. Nonfiction loves to adorn itself with fiction, while fiction tends to cling to nonfiction like flesh on a bone. So my list is mostly bones, and one big sea pearl.
Few books have made such a lasting impression on me as this remarkable work on fairy tales and how to unlock their deep-rooted lessons.
It was like seeing the nuts and bolts of a secret language laid bare. Fairy tales share a similar structure and vocabulary to dreams, and one of the characters in my novel has very vivid dreams that are sending her messages. It’s hard to write dreams effectively. Too obtuse and they lose the reader. Too obvious, and they come off as silly.
But this book by von Franz is so enlightening and intelligent, you come away understanding the language of the unconscious so much better. It was a real eye-opener for me. John Wick fans will recognize the cover illustration from the library scene in Parabellum.
It’s Ivan Bilibin’s illustration of Vasilisa from the Eastern European folktale Baba Yaga.
A renowned psychologist examines fairy tales through a Jungian lens, revealing what they can teach us about the darkest sides of human behavior
Fairy tales seem to be innocent stories, yet they contain profound lessons for those who would dive deep into their waters of meaning. In this book, Marie-Louise von Franz uncovers some of the important lessons concealed in tales from around the world, drawing on the wealth of her knowledge of folklore, her experience as a psychoanalyst and a collaborator with Jung, and her great personal wisdom. Among the many topics discussed in relation to the dark side…
I’ve been fascinated by wildlife since the age of 5, and 60 years later I’m still addicted. I worked as a research scientist on bats and birds and then morphed into a nature conservationist. I worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for 25 years – 13 years as the Conservation Director. I’ve written books about wildlife and its conservation and regularly review such books on my blog. I hope that my work has made a difference and that my books, and other authors’ books, can move things on a bit quicker too.
This reminds me strongly of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac - a classic of the ecological literature, and I can think of no better comparison to give you an idea of this book’s content, quality, and worth. It is set largely in Highland Scotland and comprises 52 short essays on wildlife and land use.
Many of the essays start with an observation of a species or place, then the author fills in the background, muses on the wider picture, and how the world could be better. It’s a simple and effective way to tell a story.
Roy Dennis is an elder statesman of the UK conservation movement, one of its doers, and one of its thinkers. This book is well worth a read.
A collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover. Through unparallelled expertise as a field naturalist, Roy Dennis is able to write about the natural world in a way that considers both the problems and the progress in ecology and conservation. Beginning with cottongrass, whose snow-white blooms blow gently in the wind across the wetter moors and bogs, this is a year-round trove of insight and knowledge for anyone who cares about the natural world - from birdsong and biodiversity to sphagnum and species reintroduction. Written by one of our most prominent advocates for rewilding, the…
Home food production & self-sufficiency was Joann Grohman’s lifelong enthusiasm. With a young, hungry family of eight children, she started milking cows by hand and did so until she was almost 90 years old. She simply could not imagine life without a family cow, a remarkable animal that makes grass into nutritious milk and cream that can feed people, pigs, and chickens, as well as provide manure to grow vegetables. When asked if having a cow means feeling stuck on the farm, she countered that a cow supports a beautiful life that can be found in no other way.
This book has had a huge impact in the UK, kickstarting a revolution in land management. Ms. Tree's husband inherited a very large estate in southern England, and they tried hard to continue farming in the usual way, raising grain. After a series of failures, economic and otherwise, they finally decided that something radically different would have to be tried and took on the challenge of allowing their land to revert to nature.
The book has been described as 'thrilling, inspiring, and deeply moving,' and it's all of that and a real page-turner.
'A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land, this should be conservation's salvation; this should be its future; this is a new hope' - Chris Packham
In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the 'Knepp experiment', a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex, using free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope.
Winner of the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Book Shop Literary Prize.
Bruce Hunt is a native Floridian writer and photographer. He has authored eleven Florida travel and history books, and over the last three decades has written and photographed hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers. For five years he was a regular feature writer and photographer for DuPont Registry Tampa Bay Magazine. His work has also appeared in The St. Petersburg Times (Tampa Bay Times), Tampa Tribune, The Visit Tampa Bay Official Visitors Guide, Backpacker Magazine, Rock & Ice Magazine, Skydiving Magazine, Florida Trend Magazine, Celebrity Car Magazine, Coastal Living Magazine, and Southern Living Magazine, among others.
The Wilder Heart of Florida is a marvelous collection of essays on wild and natural Florida, selected and edited by Dr. Leslie Poole, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and History at Rollins College, and Dr. Jack Davis, Professor of History at the University of Florida. It is a second volume to the renowned 1999 The Wild Heart of Florida, and features insightful chapters penned by experts on real Florida, like Cynthia Barnett, Lauren Groff, Totch Brown, Lars Anderson, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Clay Henderson, as well as Jack Davis, and Leslie Poole, among others.
Fall under the spell of Florida's natural environment
In this captivating collection, Florida's most notable authors, poets, and environmentalists take readers on a journey through the natural wonders of the state. Continuing in the legacy of the beloved classic The Wild Heart of Florida, this book features thirty-four pieces by a new slate of well-known and emerging writers.
In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff describes the beauty of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. Environmental writer Cynthia Barnett listens to seashells on Sanibel Island. Legendary journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas records the sights and sounds of the Everglades…
I have been writing about nature and nature conservation for nearly 35 years. I have seen it from all angles—government, non-government, private, local—in the US, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I have written five books about how we can do better at both saving wild places and wild creatures, while also understanding how those efforts must also account for the human communities that depend on those places for their lives and livelihoods. Over the decades I have seen enormous and promising shifts in conservation practices, and although we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis that is entirely of our own making, we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past.
National parks have long been the bedrock of nature conservation efforts. For most Westerners, their vision of Africa is built on images from iconic parks like Tanzania’s Serengeti or Kenya’s Masai Mara. Those parks, however, were imposed on the African landscape with lasting and often devastating consequences, among them the pernicious notion that Africans themselves are little more than part of the fauna and are an impediment to conservation efforts that can be swept aside. Roderick Neuman reveals that far from a simple means to protect nature, parks are a complicated intersection of ecological, economic, political, and cultural issues. His analysis of Arusha National Park in Tanzania, not far from Mount Kilimanjaro, melds careful scholarship with passionate and vivid writing and is an essential text for understanding the promise and limitations of long-established conservation practices.
Arusha National Park in northern Tanzania embodies all the political-ecological dilemmas facing protected areas throughout Africa. This book presents an analysis of the problems, arguing that the roots of the ongoing struggle between the park and the neighbouring Meru peasant communities go much deeper than the issues of poverty, population growth and ignorance usually cited. The author claims the conflict reflects differences that go back to the beginning of colonial rule. By imposing a European ideal of pristine wilderness, the establishment of national parks and protected areas displaced African meanings as well as material access to the land. The book…
I’ve been fascinated by wildlife since the age of 5, and 60 years later I’m still addicted. I worked as a research scientist on bats and birds and then morphed into a nature conservationist. I worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for 25 years – 13 years as the Conservation Director. I’ve written books about wildlife and its conservation and regularly review such books on my blog. I hope that my work has made a difference and that my books, and other authors’ books, can move things on a bit quicker too.
Helm is an Oxford University economist, a wildlife enthusiast, and former chair of the UK’s Natural Capital Committee. He is an outsider inside the system.
Should we put an economic value on nature? If you worry about this then you must read this book.
If you know a bit more than Helm does about wildlife, as I think I do, then he trips now and again (but never falls flat on his face) whereas if you know less about economics than Helm does (as I certainly do) it is difficult to detect whether or not he gallops sure-footedly across the terrain.
This book, though, is a very good read - I agreed with much of it and was interested by all of it.
'One of the most important books of the decade' Country Life
Finally, a practical, realistic plan to rescue, preserve and enhance nature.
News about Britain's wildlife and ecosystems tends to be grim. In Green and Prosperous Land, Oxford economist and Natural Capital Committee chair Dieter Helm shares his radical but tangible plan for positive change.
This pragmatic approach to environmentalism includes a summary of Britain's green assets, a look towards possible futures and an achievable 25-year plan for a green and prosperous country. The bold generational plan assesses the environment as a whole, explains the necessity of protecting and enhancing…
I love being outdoors and I’ve been fortunate to spend much of life under the open sky, both professionally and personally. Learning about the landscapes I’ve visited on my outdoor adventures or helped protect through my professional conservation and writing work is both fulfilling and inspiring. Skilled writers deepen my understanding of the diverse, intricate, and complicated natural world. Whether I’m reading to better understand the policies and histories that have shaped our public lands or about the adventurers who inspire me to get out there, I always find immense value and enjoyment when reading about the landscapes we share.
Aldo Leopold was a Forest Service ranger stationed in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest when he first began advocating for a new approach to managing national forests. Leopold’s visionary thinking and diligent advocacy resulted in the first-ever Wilderness Area in the U.S.—the Gila Wilderness Area, established in 1922—more than 40 years before the Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964. A Sand County Almanac is Leopold’s best-known work and follows his efforts to restore a patch of cut-over farmland in Wisconsin while also articulating his vision of a land ethic where humans and nature are intertwined and care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. His beautiful writing resonated strongly with me when I first read A Sand County Almanac more than two decades ago, and his vision remains as important now as ever.
Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac has enthralled generations of nature lovers and conservationists and is indeed revered by everyone seriously interested in protecting the natural world. Hailed for prose that is "full of beauty and vigor and bite" (The New York Times), it is perhaps the finest example of nature writing since Thoreau's Walden. Now this classic work is available in a completely redesigned and lavishly illustrated gift edition, featuring over one hundred beautiful full-color pictures by Michael Sewell, one of the country's leading nature photographers. Sewell, whose work has graced the pages of Audubon and Sierra magazines, walked…
