Here are 100 books that Rewild Yourself fans have personally recommended if you like
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Green sketching opened my eyes to the beauty and joy in my life that I’d never noticed before, beauty and joy that cost nothing to me or the planet. It quietened my busy brain, reduced my anxiety, and made me much more resilient. I’m now trying to help others put down their phones and pick up a pencil. Because when we change what we look at, we can change how we feel. And I’m convinced that once we see and appreciate nature’s beauty with fresh eyes, we’ll start to love and take care of it again.
This book introduced me to the concept of joy spotting and changed the way I see the world. Well-researched and hugely engaging, I was fascinated to discover why I’m consistently drawn to certain color combinations, patterns, and environments. Full of ‘aha’ moments, I loved connecting the dots (in my case, multi-colored) and clarifying what and where truly brings me joy.
Few books have impacted my life and creativity so much and on such an ongoing basis. But since reading this book, I’ve embraced my love of color throughout my home, garden, and wardrobe and embedded the concept of joy spotting at the heart of my work. I highly recommend it!
Make small changes to your surroundings and create extraordinary happiness in your life with groundbreaking research from designer and TED star Ingrid Fetell Lee.
Next Big Idea Club selection—chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant as one of the "two most groundbreaking new nonfiction reads of the season!"
"This book has the power to change everything! Writing with depth, wit, and insight, Ingrid Fetell Lee shares all you need to know in order to create external environments that give rise to inner joy." —Susan Cain, author of Quiet and founder of Quiet Revolution
Green sketching opened my eyes to the beauty and joy in my life that I’d never noticed before, beauty and joy that cost nothing to me or the planet. It quietened my busy brain, reduced my anxiety, and made me much more resilient. I’m now trying to help others put down their phones and pick up a pencil. Because when we change what we look at, we can change how we feel. And I’m convinced that once we see and appreciate nature’s beauty with fresh eyes, we’ll start to love and take care of it again.
As someone who straddles the sciences and the arts, I devoured this book and loved learning more about why participating in the arts, whether as a creator or a beholder, brings me so much joy.
I had no idea the cells in my heart actively respond to aesthetic stimuli!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A life-altering journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts—and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities.
“This book blew my mind!”—Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Grit
Many of us think of the arts as entertainment—a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.…
Green sketching opened my eyes to the beauty and joy in my life that I’d never noticed before, beauty and joy that cost nothing to me or the planet. It quietened my busy brain, reduced my anxiety, and made me much more resilient. I’m now trying to help others put down their phones and pick up a pencil. Because when we change what we look at, we can change how we feel. And I’m convinced that once we see and appreciate nature’s beauty with fresh eyes, we’ll start to love and take care of it again.
I love walking and always go for a joy-spotting ‘doodle walk’ when I need to clear my head or lift my spirits. This fascinating book helped me understand how the humble walk changes my thoughts and perceptions and why it’s so good for my health and well-being.
I no longer miss running and savor my walks more than ever. I highly recommend it if you need a nudge to get outdoors!
'Fascinating ... Connected both to old wisdom and new scientific frontiers of discovery' Lauren Laverne
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'We can all learn something from 52 Ways to Walk. I know I can.' Michael Ball, BBC Radio 2
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Walking strengthens our bodies, calms our minds and lifts our spirits. But it does so much more than this. Our vision, hearing, respiration, sleep, cognition, memory, blood pressure, sense of smell and balance are all enhanced by how we walk. For instance:
* Walking in cold weather burns extra fat and builds more muscle.
* Walking alone strengthens our memories.
* Walking in woodland…
Green sketching opened my eyes to the beauty and joy in my life that I’d never noticed before, beauty and joy that cost nothing to me or the planet. It quietened my busy brain, reduced my anxiety, and made me much more resilient. I’m now trying to help others put down their phones and pick up a pencil. Because when we change what we look at, we can change how we feel. And I’m convinced that once we see and appreciate nature’s beauty with fresh eyes, we’ll start to love and take care of it again.
I hesitate to recommend a book about grief in a list about joy. Yet, although Beth Kempton’s heartbreaking account of losing her mother and friend certainly made me cry, her explanation of the Japanese concept of kokoro left me feeling lighter and wiser.
While incredibly hard to define, kokoro incorporates a sense of tuning into nature’s fleeting beauty, the bittersweetness of love, and the innate wisdom in our hearts. Before listening to this book, I felt self-conscious about my lack of direction and planning. Afterward, I understood that ever since losing my father 12 years ago, I’ve simply been following the whispers of my own kokoro, noticing beauty and joy wherever I can find them and for however long they last.
Kokoro is an invitation to cultivate stillness and contentment in an ever-changing, uncertain world, inspired by ancient and contemporary Japanese wisdom. Drawing on a thousand years of Japanese literature, culture, and philosophical ideas to explore the true nature of time and what it means to be human, Kokoro--which mysteriously translates as "heart-mind"--is a meditation on living well.
Join Japanologist Beth Kempton on this life-changing pilgrimage far beyond the tourist trail, to uncover the soul of the country, its people, and its deeply buried wisdom. Along the way you'll discover a revolutionary way of looking at life and the world that…
When I was young, I read Bambi…and it made me want to go hunting. Perhaps I missed the point. But at the time, I thought Bambi’s exploits sounded much like the animal yarns my dad brought home from his autumnal hunting trips. Both fascinated me. I loved the idea of getting a glimpse into a secret world where animals starred in their own stories and people were, at most, part of the scenery. As an environmental historian, I’ve tried to wring those kinds of stories out of historical documents that are much more suited for telling us about human actions and desires.
Economy and ecology are inextricably intertwined in The Destruction of the Bison. Isenberg takes what is a familiar story—the tragic extermination and near-extinction of the plains bison—and turns it into a cautionary tale about the far-reaching ecosystemic effects of unrestrained capitalistic exploitation. But what I like is that Isenberg’s is not just the same old song of Euroamerican rapaciousness and indigenous vulnerability. He details how Native American buffalo hunters played a crucial role in the species’ decline and how environmental change—droughts, population explosions, and animal diseases—interacted with human actions to doom the buffalo.
For the last twenty years, The Destruction of the Bison has been an essential work in environmental history. Andrew C. Isenberg offers a concise analysis of the near-extinction of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than 1000 a century later. His wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study carefully considers the multiple causes, cultural and ecological, of the destruction of the species. The twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new foreword connecting this seminal work to developments in the field - notably new perspectives in Native American history and the rise of transnational history - and placing the…
Growing up, my father was a biologist and my mother was a children’s librarian, so I suppose it’s no surprise that I’ve become a children’s book author who writes about valuing the planet where we we live. I’ve always had a deep love of reading and some of my most cherished childhood memories are of walking through the woods behind our house, with one parent or another identifying the plants, animals, amphibians, birds, and insects that shared our land. My very first piece of writing was a poem about an owl that I wrote in first grade, and now all these years later, I’m still reading, writing, and recommending books that celebrate our marvelous world.
This is my all-time favorite picture book. I love books that inspire readers to think “big” – to consider how we’re all connected to each other and to the world around us.
The text of All the World is simple and lyrical, a beautiful poem that could stand on its own, but then you add in Marla Frazee’s gorgeous illustrations, and it’s a perfect match. I’ve read this book countless times, and every time I read it, I tear up. There’s hope, beauty, and wonder all portrayed in this amazing book.
All the world is here. It is there. It is everywhere. All the world is right where you are. Now. Following a circle of family and friends through the course of a day from morning till night, this endearing picture book affirms the importance of all things great and small in our world, from the tiniest shell on the beach, to warm family connections, to the widest sunset sky.
I’ve spent a career as an educator and writer exploring how it is that we humans are a part of the natural world in which we live. We are all interconnected with each other and with the ecosystem in which we live, be it a “pristine” wilderness or a concreted-over metropolis. This is wisdom that of course has been long known by many peoples throughout history, though something that seems easily forgotten as we bustle our way through life. Through these books, maybe we can begin to remember that interconnectedness.
I began reading Sig Olson books when I was in high school, prompted by a biology teacher. Olson uses eloquent prose and emotional description to describe the wilderness lake country of Northern Minnesota and Southern Ontario. Over a career of decades he wrote about his experiences in the wilderness and easily brings the reader into his world, allowing them to see it through his eyes and experiences. Reflectionsis his last book, and is truly just that, reflections of a life lived on the edge of wilderness and the struggles of balancing desires for preservation of wilderness with encroachment of the modern world.
Since my late teens, I have traveled extensively in wilderness areas across the United States and Alaska, as well as in Canada, Switzerland, and Patagonia. Backpacking, technical mountain climbing, and canoeing have led me to appreciate wilderness for its own sake and to become a fierce advocate for its protection. Since moving to Seattle in 1982, I have hiked extensively in the western mountains and experienced a profound sense of peace and wonder in the wild. The listed books have deepened my appreciation of the wild's intrinsic value. I have tried to convey this appreciation to my readers in my three novels set in the American West.
As Roderick Nash is the scholarly historian of the term “wilderness” in the American mind, Gary Snyder is the sagacious philosopher of the term for contemporary America. I admire Snyder’s poetic style as much as his evocation of the meaning of “place”; i.e., how one can develop both a physical and a spiritual awareness of the wild around us and then transfer that awareness to a sense of one’s place in the larger country and then the planet itself.
From chapters such as “The Place, The Region, and the Commons” and “Survival and Sacrament,” I have gleaned what I can only term Snyder’s mystical appreciation of wilderness and its importance for the future of the human race. Snyder is truly the “High Priest” of how to “practice” the wild in one’s own life.
"This is an important book for anyone interested in the ethical interrelationships of things, places, and people, and it is a book that is not just read but taken in." ―Library Journal
Featuring a new introduction by Robert Hass, the nine captivatingly meditative essays in The Practice of the Wild display the deep understanding and wide erudition of Gary Snyder in the ways of Buddhist belief, wildness, wildlife, and the world. These essays, first published in 1990, stand as the mature centerpiece of Snyder’s work and thought, and this profound collection is widely accepted as one of the central texts…
I research, write and speak about the global environmental emergency and the policies and politics we need to adequately respond. Drawing on a decade of experience in academia, activism, and policymaking, my work explores the leadership needed to transition to more sustainable and equitable societies while contending with the growing destabilisation resulting from the worsening environmental crisis. I’ve worked at a range of leading policy research organisations and universities and have won awards for my work. I’ve got a BSc in physics and an MPhil in economies from the University of Oxford.
I can find it overwhelming to think how large and bad the environmental crisis really is. Record temperatures, species extinction, fires and storms. In many ways, this book hammers home the scale – but it does so productively. It’s been an excellent companion for me in learning more about the problem. It’s written by two of the world’s top scientists who have led the way in helping us see this as an environmental crisis, not just a problem of climate change or species loss, but an overall destabilization of the natural world. This is often missed from the mainstream discussion and Lewis and Maslin offer a whole range of approaches that can help you make sense of what we can do in response.
'Brilliantly written and genuinely one of the most important books I have ever read' - Ellie Mae O'Hagan
An engrossing exploration of the science, history and politics of the Anthropocene, one of the most important scientific ideas of our time, from two world-renowned experts
Meteorites, methane, mega-volcanoes and now human beings; the old forces of nature that transformed Earth many millions of years ago are joined by another: us. Our actions have driven Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. For the first time in our home planet's 4.5-billion year history a single species is dictating Earth's future.
I’m an environmental journalist (BBC, The Guardian, The Sunday Times) and book author, based in the UK. My interest lies in the intersection between human health, the environment, and climate crisis: the actions we can take that not only reduce climate change for future generations but also improve biodiversity, health, and wellbeing right now. That led to me write my first book, Clearing The Air, about air pollution. And I’m now writing my second book, The Last Drop, looking at how climate change is affecting the world’s water cycle and our access to freshwater. My best books list below maybe misses out on some obvious choices (Naomi Klein, Rachel Carson, etc) in favour of more recent books and authors deserving of a wider audience.
Gaia’s book came out at a time when climate change wasn’t a hot literary topic and Greta Thunberg hadn’t yet painted “Skolstrejk för Klimatet” on a sign. The Anthropocene marks a new Geological age, the Age of Humans, and Gaia, an editor at Nature, set out to discover what that means for the planet, her, and us. In her words: "I set out to discover whether our species will survive, and how". In so doing she became the first female winner of the Royal Society science book prize.
** Winner of Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2015 **
We live in epoch-making times. The changes we humans have made in recent decades have altered our world beyond anything it has experienced in its 4.6 billion-year history. As a result, our planet is said to be crossing into the Anthropocene - the Age of Humans.
Gaia Vince decided to travel the world at the start of this new age to see what life is really like for the people on the frontline of the planet we've made. From artificial glaciers in the Himalayas to painted mountains in…
