100 books like Life Cycle Assessment

By Kathrina Simonen,

Here are 100 books that Life Cycle Assessment fans have personally recommended if you like Life Cycle Assessment. 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 Thermal Delight in Architecture

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Author Of The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design

From my list on environmental schematic design.

Why are we passionate about this?

Alison and Walter have come into architecture on different paths, Alison with a biology/chemistry background (yes, one can become an architect with an accredited, first professional degree in architecture) and Walter through architectural engineering. We both believe that the union of science, aesthetics, energy, comfort, and health make buildings work! We enjoy creating simplified design processes for students to use in their work, so that they can gain confidence in the first steps of design. Equally, we feel it important to clearly understand what is to be created and how to confirm that what was intended actually results in the built environment.

Alison's book list on environmental schematic design

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Why did Alison love this book?

A must read for exploring the qualitative, cultural, and social sensations of heat and coolth and understanding the thermodynamics of building design that elicits ways that we use, remember, and care about the energy that provides comfort (or discomfort) for building occupants.

Often in our environmental systems courses, we ask students to write down their most memorable thermal experience. Responses range from very hot to very cold and include many contrasting events, such as skiing, then sitting around a campfire. Thermal Delight gives experience after experience for us to consider how our comfort might be tempered or enjoyed and sets the foundation for designing with climate.

As designers, should we make our buildings not-uncomfortable or make them delightful?

By Lisa Heschong,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Thermal Delight in Architecture as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design.

Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. The hearth fire, the sauna, the Roman and Japanese baths, and the Islamic garden are discussed as archetypes of thermal delight…


Book cover of The Passive Solar Energy Book: A Complete Guide to Passive Solar Home, Greenhouse and Building Design

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Author Of The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design

From my list on environmental schematic design.

Why are we passionate about this?

Alison and Walter have come into architecture on different paths, Alison with a biology/chemistry background (yes, one can become an architect with an accredited, first professional degree in architecture) and Walter through architectural engineering. We both believe that the union of science, aesthetics, energy, comfort, and health make buildings work! We enjoy creating simplified design processes for students to use in their work, so that they can gain confidence in the first steps of design. Equally, we feel it important to clearly understand what is to be created and how to confirm that what was intended actually results in the built environment.

Alison's book list on environmental schematic design

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Why did Alison love this book?

Likely the first energy “guidebook” for architects. Published during the 1970s oil crises, Mazria lays out a design process for saving energy through passive solar design.

The book is full of foundational knowledge, core principles, concepts, early data on material properties based on research done at the University of Oregon, clear definitions, and lots of black and white hand drawings showing solar positions, angles, and access for buildings. Though no longer in print, copies are still available, and the content is still relevant today.

As more design process is relegated to blackbox software that “may” consider many of the same variables dealt with in the Handbook, it is wise to refer to Mazria to conceptually back up important design decisions. [As an aside, Ed Mazria is currently the CEO of Architecture 2030.]

By Edward Mazria,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Passive Solar Energy Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Provides comprehensive information on the design and application of passive solar-energy systems and assesses twenty-seven design patterns that offset a variety of factors influencing the effectiveness of solar heating


Book cover of American Building: The Environmental Forces That Shape It

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Author Of The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design

From my list on environmental schematic design.

Why are we passionate about this?

Alison and Walter have come into architecture on different paths, Alison with a biology/chemistry background (yes, one can become an architect with an accredited, first professional degree in architecture) and Walter through architectural engineering. We both believe that the union of science, aesthetics, energy, comfort, and health make buildings work! We enjoy creating simplified design processes for students to use in their work, so that they can gain confidence in the first steps of design. Equally, we feel it important to clearly understand what is to be created and how to confirm that what was intended actually results in the built environment.

Alison's book list on environmental schematic design

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Why did Alison love this book?

Fitch is best known as a city planner—not as an architect or engineer. Perhaps it is this perspective that allowed him to prepare a delightful introduction to the various sensory dimensions—the environmental forces—we engage as building users.

These dimensions, which constitute much of our holistic experience with architecture, include air quality, light, sound, and heat. None are truly shown on architectural plans. All affect us for better or worse. This is a great introductory read bereft of equations. 

By James Marston Fitch, William Bobenhausen,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Few books have influenced the field of architecture more than American Building: The Environmental Forces That Shape It. Originally published in 1947, it has emerged as a classic work on the relationships among buildings, their inhabitants, and the environment. Now comes the first major revision in over twenty-five years, bringing this essential book completely up to date for a new, more environmentally aware generation of architects and designers.
In this superb volume, James Marston Fitch provides a fundamental theory of buildings. "The ultimate task of architecture," he writes, "is to act in favor of human beings: to interpose itself between…


Book cover of Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Author Of The Green Studio Handbook: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design

From my list on environmental schematic design.

Why are we passionate about this?

Alison and Walter have come into architecture on different paths, Alison with a biology/chemistry background (yes, one can become an architect with an accredited, first professional degree in architecture) and Walter through architectural engineering. We both believe that the union of science, aesthetics, energy, comfort, and health make buildings work! We enjoy creating simplified design processes for students to use in their work, so that they can gain confidence in the first steps of design. Equally, we feel it important to clearly understand what is to be created and how to confirm that what was intended actually results in the built environment.

Alison's book list on environmental schematic design

Alison G. Kwok and Walter Grondzik Why did Alison love this book?

Architecture is often referred to as an art and a science. This is a reasonably accurate statement in the abstract. In practice, we often assess architecture visually (artistically) and assume (hope) that the science is there (even if hidden). In fact, physics always has the last word.

Fire and Memory reminds us that thermodynamics matters and that buildings are essentially anti-entropic constructs. Who can resist a proposition such as “whether to use the wood to build a small shelter or as firewood for a bonfire. An entire theory of architecture is encapsulated in this simple question.” Or a chapter titled “Energy as the Currency of Nature.”

By Luis Fernandez-Galiano, Gina Carino (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Architecture and fire, construction and combustion, meet in this poetic treatise on energy in building.

In Fire and Memory, Luis Fernández-Galiano reconstructs the movement from cold to warm architecture, from building fire to building a building with and for fire, through what he calls a "metaphorical plundering" of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and economics, and in particular of ecology and thermodynamics. Beginning with the mythical fire in the origins of architecture and moving to its symbolic representation in the twentieth century, Galiano develops a theoretical dialogue between combustion and construction that ranges from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, from the…


Book cover of Mining North America: An Environmental History Since 1522

Kenneth O'Reilly Author Of Asphalt: A History

From my list on the environment for the age of global warming.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I left Wisconsin and arrived for a position at the University of Alaska Anchorage, I was struck by the state’s nearly manic fear of low prices for the oil flowing from Prudhoe Bay through the Alaska (or North Slope) oil pipeline. Years later I returned to Wisconsin and quickly learned that there was relatively little interest in a pipeline that ran down the entire state in the manner of the Alaska pipeline. Only this pipeline carried synthetic crude made from natural asphalt hacked or melted out of the ground in Alberta, Canada. My interest in the environmental and political aspects of that pipeline set me on the path to a book about asphalt.

Kenneth's book list on the environment for the age of global warming

Kenneth O'Reilly Why did Kenneth love this book?

This anthology makes the case that an empire of extraction has existed from the dawn of the colonial era until deep into the 21st Century. The essays in the “Health and Environmental Justice” section are both fascinating and disturbing. And how could they not be disturbing with such words as these in chapter titles? “Uranium Mine and Mine Tailings.” “Arsenic Pollution.” “Quebec Asbestos.” Nearly every chapter in this section emphasizes the impact on indigenous populations with the chapter title on the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, being particularly stark. It opens with this: “If the Rivers Ran South.”

By John Robert McNeill (editor), George Vrtis (editor),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Over the past five hundred years, North Americans have increasingly relied on mining to produce much of their material and cultural life. From cell phones and computers to cars, roads, pipes, pans, and even wall tile, mineral-intensive products have become central to North American societies. As this process has unfolded, mining has also indelibly shaped the natural world and the human societies within it. Mountains have been honeycombed, rivers poisoned, forests leveled, and the consequences of these environmental transformations have fallen unevenly across North America. Drawing on the work of scholars from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, Mining North…


Book cover of Coffee Is Not Forever: A Global History of the Coffee Leaf Rust

Robert W. Thurston Author Of Coffee: From Bean to Barista

From my list on US, China, Britain, France, and Nicaragua coffee.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.

Robert's book list on US, China, Britain, France, and Nicaragua coffee

Robert W. Thurston Why did Robert love this book?

McCook traces the global devastation of coffee trees around the world that began in 1869. His work is not just about coffee, but about the ways in which pathogens are spread by air, ships, birds, and even by humans tracking it into remote sites on their boots. So the book is about coffee but about much more:  why do certain pathogens explode all of a sudden; how have farmers tried to cope with the fungus, which destroys entire trees and whole farms; what is the genetic stock of coffee now; why has rust suddenly appeared in Latin America in recent years; and what experiments are going on to try to defeat rust? Stuart, by the way, is a wonderful guy to meet and talk to about coffee and its pests. His book is absolutely readable!

By Stuart McCook,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Coffee Is Not Forever as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The global coffee industry, which fuels the livelihoods of farmers, entrepreneurs, and consumers around the world, rests on fragile ecological foundations. In Coffee Is Not Forever, Stuart McCook explores the transnational story of this essential crop through a history of one of its most devastating diseases, the coffee leaf rust. He deftly synthesizes agricultural, social, and economic histories with plant genetics and plant pathology to investigate the increasing interdependence of the world's coffee-producing zones. In the process, he illuminates the progress and prognosis of the challenges--especially climate change--that pose an existential threat to a crop that global consumers often take…


Book cover of Greyhound Nation: A Coevolutionary History of England, 1200-1900

Michael Worboys Author Of Doggy People: The Victorians Who Made the Modern Dog

From my list on the history of modern dogs.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of biology and biomedicine who has always been an outsider. Most of my colleagues have worked on ‘Darwin to DNA’ – evolution, physiology, genetics, and molecular biology. My interests have been in applied biology – parasites, insects, fungi, bacteria, biomedicine, animal diseases, and latterly dogs. It was a book on rabies, that I wrote with Neil Pemberton, that got me into dogs. In our research and writing we explored the wider social history of dog ownership and then, encouraged by the new interest in Animal History, researched how, and by whom, dogs’ bodies and behaviour had been shaped and reshaped, beginning in the Victorian period. 

Michael's book list on the history of modern dogs

Michael Worboys Why did Michael love this book?

Edmund Russell has a challenging approach to History. He wants histories of human societies and animals to be written together.

It is uncontroversial that humans shaped domestic and farm animals, but Russell contends that these animals have shaped human societies, in a process he terms coevolution.

This fascinating book reveals the coevolution of greyhounds and humans. Greyhounds were created with the physique and speed to catch hares on country estates. Then in the nineteenth century, through organized coursing events and dog shows, greyhounds became standardized and more uniform in look.

The new greyhounds created new social roles through the democratization of greyhound ownership and new recreational opportunities. Coursing was reinvented in the twentieth century as greyhound racing, an innovative mass urban entertainment, where dogs chased electrically powered hares in a floodlit spectacle.

By Edmund Russell,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Edmund Russell's much-anticipated new book examines interactions between greyhounds and their owners in England from 1200 to 1900 to make a compelling case that history is an evolutionary process. Challenging the popular notion that animal breeds remain uniform over time and space, Russell integrates history and biology to offer a fresh take on human-animal coevolution. Using greyhounds in England as a case study, Russell shows that greyhounds varied and changed just as much as their owners. Not only did they evolve in response to each other, but people and dogs both evolved in response to the forces of modernization, such…


Book cover of Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

Jenny Price Author Of Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto

From my list on revolutionize how Americans think about nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer, artist, and historian, and I’ve spent much of my career trying to blow up the powerful American definition of environment as a non-human world “out there”, and to ask how it’s allowed environmentalists, Exxon, and the EPA alike to refuse to take responsibility for how we inhabit environments. Along the way, I’ve written Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America and "Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA"; co-founded the LA Urban Rangers public art collective; and co-created the “Our Malibu Beaches” phone app. I currently live in St. Louis, where I’m a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School at Washington University-St. Louis. 

Jenny's book list on revolutionize how Americans think about nature

Jenny Price Why did Jenny love this book?

An oldie but a goodie, and a classic. Cronon’s lead essay “The Trouble with Wilderness” roused ‘90s environmentalism like a brilliant party crasher—but don’t miss Richard White’s “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living,” Giovanna Di Chiro’s “Nature as Community,” and, well, my own “Looking for Nature at the Mall.”

By William Cronon (editor),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In a lead essay that powerfully states the broad argument of the book, William Cronon writes that the environmentalist goal of wilderness preservation is conceptually and politically wrongheaded. Among the ironies and entanglements resulting from this goal are the sale of nature in our malls through the Nature Company, and the disputes between working people and environmentalists over spotted owls and other objects of species preservation.

The problem is that we haven't learned to live responsibly in nature. The environmentalist aim of legislating humans out of the wilderness is no solution. People, Cronon argues, are inextricably tied to nature, whether…


Book cover of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

Joseph P. O'Connor Author Of Off Grid Solar: A handbook for Photovoltaics with Lead-Acid or Lithium-Ion batteries

From my list on understand future potential of renewable energy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve dedicated my career to renewable energy, because I think it really will save us from climate change disaster. Solar, wind, and advanced energy storage will usher us into the 21st century. I’ve seen many innovative people and companies use technology to create a better future. We still have a long uphill battle to reverse climate change, but we now have the technology that can help save our planet. It is time to implement it. These five books (in very different ways) give us the tools and understanding of how renewable energy will shape the future.

Joseph's book list on understand future potential of renewable energy

Joseph P. O'Connor Why did Joseph love this book?

The impending doom of climate change has been stressing me out for over a decade. It feels like my son will inherit a world that resembles the dystopian futures of Mad Max or Blade Runner. But the future we’re entering into will be more nuanced than that. 

This book helped me realize that the future may not be as bleak as I had once imagined. The environmental alarmists may have good intentions, but their efforts might be causing more harm than good.

By Michael Shellenberger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Apocalypse Never as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now a National Bestseller!

Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.

Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.

But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die," contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong…


Book cover of Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto

Erik D. Curren Author Of The Solar Patriot: A Citizen's Guide to Helping America Win Clean Energy Independence

From my list on solving the climate crisis.

Why am I passionate about this?

Drawing on my own experience as a local elected official and citizen lobbyist at all levels of government, I write books to help get citizens involved in the biggest challenges of our day. As an activist for clean energy, I wanted to write an easy-to-use guide to help ordinary citizens to become effective champions for more solar power in America. The Solar Patriot is my third book and my second on solar power. For two decades I have worked as a communications consultant and advocate for solar power, renewable energy, and climate solutions. Now, I’m writing a call to action for America off of fossil fuels as soon as possible to meet the urgent challenge of the climate crisis.

Erik's book list on solving the climate crisis

Erik D. Curren Why did Erik love this book?

A welcome corrective to the trend of X number of things you can do in your personal life to save the Earth that won't threaten the rule of greedy polluters over the economy and government, Price's lighthearted book welcomes the reader with a smile but strikes hard against propaganda from corporate polluters while she stands up for climate justice. To help readers make a real difference, as opposed to doing things that feel helpful but really aren't like buying a Prius, Price does actually offer a few personal life changes, like buying less stuff or buying higher quality stuff at lower quantity. But most of her ideas are about thinking differently about the environment--such as Redefine Economy or even Redefine Extremism (greedheads, not environmentalists, are the real extremists). Or getting active in public policy--from the strikingly simple "Vote!" to "Join up locally--government & economy R us."

By Jenny Price,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stop Saving the Planet! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We've been "saving the planet" for decades now and the crises have only got worse. Many of us-environmentalists included-continue to live deeply unsustainable lives. At home, affluent citizens "buy green"; while at work, they maximise profits with dirty energy and toxic industries that are poisoning poorer communities.

With brevity, humour and plenty of attitude, Jenny Price tracks "save the planet" enthusiasm through strategies that range from ridiculously ineffective (Prius-buying and carbon trading) to flat-out counterproductive (greenwashing and public subsidies to greenwash). We need to imagine far better ways to use and inhabit environments. Why aren't we cleaning up the messes…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in environmentalism, planning, and climate change?

Environmentalism 198 books
Planning 49 books
Climate Change 209 books