100 books like Pitfall

This book was released when I was starting my own work on mining history, and it greatly influenced everything I have written since. I love how LeCain traces how the demand for copper to electrify American cities led to the creation of massive holes such as the Bingham and Berkeley pits.

For me, the crux of the book is the idea that, as the quality of copper ore declined, mining companies used more energy and brute force machinery to dig unimaginably large open pits, producing landscape scars and toxic legacies that are still with us today. It makes visible the immense cost of America’s great industrial acceleration. 

I have rarely encountered a book that captures the local impacts of mining as well as Lianne Leddy’s Serpent River Resurgence. I was impressed with how the author, a Serpent River First Nation member, used oral history and family stories to document how the uranium rush at Elliot Lake, Ontario, irrevocably altered the ability of Serpent River members to hunt, fish, and gather off the land.

To me, the book's real strength was the author’s refusal to depict her fellow community members as victims, highlighting their successful campaign for environmental cleanup of the toxic legacies that remained long after the uranium mines had closed. 

Asbestos was once thought of as a life-saving fire retardant used to construct walls and ceilings, but now we know it is (in its dust form) the cause of deadly lung diseases. I loved this book because it focuses on the struggles of people on the front lines of exposure: asbestos miners and millworkers.

I was inspired by the bravery of asbestos miners when they went on strike in 1949, partly for safer working conditions, only to meet the batons and paddy wagons of the Quebec provincial police. I was also shocked by the fact the owner of the mine, Johns-Manville, secretly harvested the lungs of dead miners for analysis at a lab in Saranac, New York, all the while suppressing the evidence of harm to the workers’ bodies. 

I have read a fair number of books, including Emile Zola’s famous Germinal, that depict coal miners as the helpless of a particularly horrible working-class hell.

I loved Thomas Andrews’ book because it highlights how much Colorado’s coal miners controlled their destiny. I was captivated by Andrews’ descriptions of how coal miners shaped the underground environment to enhance safety and increase their income (they were paid by the weight of ore mined rather than an hourly wage).

For me, the most fascinating part of it was Andrews’ revisionist history of the infamous Ludlow massacre of 1914, which the author argues was part of a larger shooting war where workers fought back against company guards and state militia rather than passively accept the coal companies’ efforts to control them.

A basic foundation for Collapse 2020 is the collapse timetable presented in the Limits to Growth model. A key assumption is that, as the world population increases, there will be related extractions of natural resources. If not controlled, many of those resources will run out. This book reports the status of world resources as of 2014. The “good news” – if we can call it that – is that the rates of resource depletion track closely with the Limits to Growth model. This is “good news” because it confirms that the model is sound. That’s “good” because it means we can rely on that model to plan for the future. On the other hand, it’s actually “very bad news”, because it shows the world is already in very bad condition.

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.”

As an environmental activist, I often run into the problem of popular politics. Consumption of certain goods, like oil or meat, drives the environmental crisis, but they also are popular—or, at least, people would feel it as a loss if they were limited. Worse, people’s livelihoods often depend on industries that are hurting the planet.

To understand possible ways forward, I turned to Thea Riofrancos. This book guided me through Ecuador's complicated environmental politics. A left-wing president won power, promising prosperity for all, funded by mining and exporting the country’s rich natural resources. Indigenous people and environmentalists proposed alternative politics, which were not funded by extraction but by an alternative green economy. The book is full of hard lessons about the challenges of building a winning environmental movement.

Kelsey builds an air-tight case for why the planet needs us to get more in touch with our emotions. Emotions dictate all our behavior and action in the world, and so we ought to know which emotions are most effective and in what situations to catalyze actions for climate justice. Because Kelsey is a scientist herself, she buttresses her case about the role of emotions in saving the planet with powerful data. We don’t need more books on “ten things you can do to save the planet.” What we do need is more books like this, which show us why doom and gloom isn’t the only game in town.

This phenomenal book is the new penguin bible for penguin aficionados! Edited by renowned penguin experts, P. Dee Boersma and Pablo Garcia Borboroglu, this comprehensive and highly informative book provides updated scientific information about penguin biology and behavior. Each species has its own dedicated chapter written by a field researcher who studies that species - so you couldn’t ask for a more expert resource for each penguin. Penguins covers everything from breeding, to foraging, to measurements, and much more. It also details the current threats, and conservation efforts to protect each species. Just about anything you’d ever want to know about each penguin species can be found in this book. Penguins is required reading for true penguin geeks, and for anyone who works with penguins!

Society has to face up to the fact that there are far too many people on planet Earth, probably several times more than is ecologically sustainable. It is no use denying it and making it taboo. Sure we need smaller ecological footprints – but we also need fewer feet. Overpopulation means that life on Earth is indeed on the brink of extinction. This is probably the best book I know that tackles the population issue with both science and compassionate ethics for all life.