Fans pick 100 books like Recovering a Lost River

Water, water everywhere—but not in the American West. I first read Reisner’s book soon after its publication in 1986, when it presented a haunting, frightening future for the western United States that is being realized today. The book reveals the inadequacy of the management of water in the western states that began as soon as there was settlement, and it takes an especially hard look at the treaties surrounding the Colorado River, which has all but disappeared in the past few years, causing panic at the Hoover Dam and in Las Vegas, Arizona, and Mexico. Reisner amply demonstrates why major cities should not be built in semi-arid and arid climes—and still, the western states’ populations continue to explode. 

After I backpacked the Inner Canyon and Tonto Trail for 10 days in Grand Canyon, I longed for a book like this: one that would wrap the massive creation of the Grand Canyon into a compelling story and explore the depth of human connection. Fedarko adeptly weaves in history, geology, environmental concerns, wildlife, flora, Indigenous culture, and climate around a thrilling dory adventure on the Colorado River—so much so that you feel you really know the park. To pair reading it with hiking or boating into the inner canyon yields an immersive experience where you can see, touch, and breathe much of what he describes. This book is always my first recommendation for anyone headed to Grand Canyon, and I’ll re-read it again during my next Grand Canyon visit.

This forgotten gem squarely focuses on the essence of rivers and the complex life systems and creatures they support. With a special perspective on the Northeast, biologist Amos brings to life the intricate connections between water, plants, and animals found in rivers and tells us in narrative style why they are essential to everything around them.

Biologist Lichatowich draws on his lifetime of experience studying and working with fisheries to reveal both the persisting wonder and the ongoing shortcomings of fish-and-wildlife agencies' mismanagement of salmon that migrate up our rivers to spawn and then return to the ocean for most of their life cycles. Striking to the heart of a critical but under-recognized issue affecting rivers today, he explains why fish hatcheries that were sold to the public as a way of compensating for fish-killing dams have actually harmed wild fish further, and he urges all who are responsible to avert an ongoing tragedy.

Dr. C. Drew Harvell is an American marine biologist who has worked extensively on the diseases of corals and other marine organisms. She starts this book with an urgent e-mail in December 2013 – sea stars were dying in Monterey, California, and Drew dropped everything to race off to find out what she could.  That is not an exaggeration. In recent years, her life has been like that. While the book deals with serious diseases having huge consequences for various marine organisms, it also reveals the way in which marine biologists can be immersed in their work yet love every minute and find ways to marvel at the mystery that is life on this planet. 

An outstanding teacher as well as researcher, Drew’s ability to captivate, then skillfully mentor students, comes through loud and clear. She captivates us too, making the subject of marine diseases (of organisms most of us… show more.

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.

Callenbach’s tale of ecological secession by Washington, Oregon, and Northern California remains an inspiration to those who believe another world is possible.

Callenbach imagined cheap solar electricity and newspapers being delivered through what was, essentially, street corner fax machines. Right on the first, wrong on the second. Unfortunately, Callenbach’s novel is sexist and even a little racist in places, and its utopian vision is unlikely to ever materialize. 

When I visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I only gleaned a few tidbits about Teddy Roosevelt’s presence there and, of course, poked my head into his log cabin. Gessner’s book filled in the gaps for me. He uses a road trip through several national parks that Roosevelt visited, including Badlands and Yosemite, to paint a picture of the president who established 228 public lands, including five national parks. But Gessner also balances praise with some of Roosevelt’s flaws, including viewing the land as unpeopled when Indigenous people lived, hunted, and thrived there long before parkhood. Gessner is savvy in his storytelling as he seamlessly leads readers through gorgeous parks, meetings with tribes striving to retain preservation, loads of Roosevelt research, and a personal road trip adventure.

This is my favourite ever environmental book. Superbly written in an engaging narrative, Emma Marris explores the complex realities and contradictions of living in a world where the human and non-human components can no longer be separated. And she finds that this mixture is not so bad. If the only way that we can keep wild nature the way it used to be (or rather, the way we usually mistakenly imagine it to have been) is to manage it ever more intensively, then we might as well accept the inevitable. Humans are part of our planet, not separate, and the reality is that all nature everywhere has at least partly been touched by the hand of humans, and in this sense, we are already living in a planetary garden.

She describes it as rambunctious because wildlife does not simply sit back and take the medicine, it grows and lives where… show more.

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa is an innovative contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighboring Eastern Cape grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the middle of the nineteenth century. Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion, overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife protection as the central preoccupations of South African conservationists.

The book traces debates about environmental degradation in successive eras of South African history. It offers a reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states.… show more.