Here are 100 books that The Fate of Rome fans have personally recommended if you like
The Fate of Rome.
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I found my passion for sustainable mobility while working on my PhD thesis about electric cars at a time when no one was interested in electric cars. I am fascinated by the disruptive forces in the transportation space. With my long-term work experience in management consulting, corporate, academics, and startups, I’m trying to make a contribution to making transport carbon-free.
This book takes an exciting angle at mobility from a human civilization perspective. It shows us how climate change triggers massive migration processes across the globe.
For me, it was a great input when considering the best place to live for myself. Recommended for everyone who wants to leave their current location and be a mobile global citizen.
Where will you live in 2030? Where will your children settle in 2040? What will the map of humanity look like in 2050?
Mobility is a recurring feature of human civilisation. Now, as climate change tips toward full-blown crisis, economies collapse, governments destabilise and technology disrupts, we're entering a new age of mass migrations - one that will scatter both the dispossessed and the well-off. Which areas will people abandon and where will they resettle? Which countries will accept or reject them? As today's world population, which includes four billion restless youth, votes with their feet, what map of human…
I consider myself a topologist of story, ever fascinated by the shapes stories take, and how those underlying forms—as much as their specific content—guide our reactions and our emotions. In a social-media-saturated age, it’s more important than ever that we practice the skills of comprehending story landscapes so that we can understand who benefits from them—and who doesn’t. Ditch the GPS: whether memoir, reportage, or fiction, these books showcase some of the map-and-compass skills we all need to navigate a complicated new era.
In the ancient Middle East Scheherazade had to begin a compelling story each night to stave off a bloodthirsty king’s tendency to murder his lovers. Journalist Lockwood traveled the world collecting the modern-day equivalent—myriad accounts of how climate change has already affected people living in numerous countries. The stories are simultaneously heartfelt and commonplace, out of this world and very much of it, perfect illustrations of how the global settles on the local like so much radioactive dust. If humanity is to have a vibrant future, the art of telling and listening to such stories will no doubt be as critical a life skill as Scheherazade’s was.
Join journalist Devi Lockwood as she bikes around the world collecting personal stories about how flood, fire, drought, and rising seas are changing communities.
It's official: 2020 will be remembered as the year when apocalyptic climate predictions finally came true. Catastrophic wildfires, relentless hurricanes, melting permafrost, and coastal flooding have given us a taste of what some communities have already been living with for far too long. Yet we don't often hear the voices of the people most affected. Journalist Devi Lockwood set out to change that.
In 1,001 Voices on Climate Change, Lockwood travels the world, often by bicycle,…
I am a geologist who studies the origin and evolution of continents, which has required traveling the world to conduct fieldwork. Most of that experience has focused on Greenland and the wilderness fringe that bounds the inland ice cap. For weeks at a time, I and two colleagues, John Korstgård and Kai Sørensen, camp in some of the world’s greatest wilderness landscapes. Over years of such research, I have come to treasure the exquisite emotional power fieldwork in wilderness settings provides. It is the most direct way to begin the journey of understanding the place of humanity in the unfolding progress of cosmic evolution and was the impetus for my recent book.
Academic research into glacial processes seldom inspires deep reflection, but this fine book dramatically changes that narrative. Although Jemma Wadham does an outstanding job providing an introduction to the physical science of glaciology, her emotionally rich descriptions of many expeditions to study the melting ice around the world underscores why fieldwork matters. She frankly presents personal challenges, life-threatening health issues, and the arduous reality of living on the fringe of massive ice sheets and glaciers in a way that exposes the deeply human experience of academic scientific research in wild nature.
A passionate eyewitness account of the mysteries and looming demise of glaciers-and what their fate means for our shared future
The ice sheets and glaciers that cover one-tenth of Earth's land surface are in grave peril. High in the Alps, Andes, and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating, even dying. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, thinning glaciers may be unlocking vast quantities of methane stored for millions of years beneath the ice. In Ice Rivers, renowned glaciologist Jemma Wadham offers a searing personal account of glaciers and the rapidly unfolding crisis that they-and we-face.
Taking readers on a personal journey from Europe and…
There’s nothing like personal experience. You have to read the literature, it’s true. That’s how we’ve all met here at Shepherd. But you have to roll up your sleeves and get down to visiting, too, if you want to write about travel. I first approached the Arctic in 1991 and I return above sixty degrees north every year, although I must confess to a secret advantage; I married a Finn. We spend summers at a little cabin north of Helsinki. I know the region personally, I keep coming back, and I invite you, whenever you can, to come up and join us!
I admire Ben Rawlence for his immersion in his subject. In previous books he reported from a refugee camp on the Kenya/Somalia border and from strife-ridden eastern Congo.
Here, he roams right across the high north, assessing the gamut of issues confronting a fast-changing north. Not all the change is dire: he quotes Kenneth Høegh, an agronomist, on the novelty of trees.
“Growing up in Greenland, trees were kind of exotic, strange,” as he describes for us Høegh’s project of foresting his island.
With chapters on the changing forest, animals wild and domestic, the changing climate, and issues and opportunities it presents, The Treeline shows us that planetary change presses forward every bit as much in the high north as down here where most of us live.
A ground-breaking and beautifully written investigation into the Arctic Treeline with an urgent environmental message.
'Evocative, wise and unflinching' Jay Griffiths, author of Wild
The Arctic treeline is the frontline of climate change, where the trees have been creeping towards the pole for fifty years already.
Scientists are only just beginning to understand the astonishing significance of these northern forests for all life on Earth. At the treeline, Rawlence witnesses the accelerating impact of climate change and the devastating legacies of colonialism and capitalism. But he also finds reasons for hope. Humans are creatures of the forest; we have always…
Brian Fagan is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous books about archaeology, the past, and climate change for general audiences. I was asked to write my first climate change book (on El Niños) and was astounded to find that few archaeologists or historians focused on the subject, whether ancient or modern. Now that’s all changed, thanks to the revolution in paleoclimatology. I’m convinced that the past has much to tell us about climate change in the future. Apart from that, the subject is fascinating and vital.
Written by a first-rate historian of wide learning, this is one of those rare books that causes one to rethink your assumptions about history. White brings climate change to the forefront in a book that ranges widely over the European settlement of America and looks at it from a climatic perspective. This is technically an academic book but is so nicely written that you’ll be glued to the page.
When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia, and its effects were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, and winters when even the Rio Grande froze. This period of climate change has come to be known as the Little Ice Age, and it played a decisive role in Europe's encounter with the lands and peoples of North America. In A Cold Welcome, Sam White tells the story of this crucial period in world history, from Europe's earliest expeditions in an…
I’m a person who thinks gardening could be one of the most important endeavors anyone can do. I’m a writer, a speaker, and the recipient of eight Garden Communicators International media awards, including a Gold in 2021 for my column, “Rooting for You,” on the Hartley-Botanic Greenhouse website. My byline has appeared in numerous magazines such as Fine Gardening, Horticulture, Sunset, and This Old House. I’m always interested in great ideas for problem-solving in the garden.
I see this as a companion book to my own book. The scope is similar, but more basic and granular in its information, whether it’s explaining what a “last frost date” is or outlining DIY crafts for attracting pollinators. But the overall message is the same—all our growing efforts are linked. The actions we take and the choices we make are far-reaching beyond our own back fences. Nature’s interconnectedness is the power gardeners have to save the planet, garden by garden.
Homeowners are looking for actionable ways to help conserve the environment, and this hopeful, heartfelt guide offers them specific guidance on how to do so in their own home gardens. Want an easy, actionable way to reduce your contribution to emissions and food waste? Create your own climate victory garden. Garden plots in towns and cities are critical to supporting ecological diversity, and by instituting organic, regenerative practices and growing some of our own food, we can shift toward living in a more responsible way. In Grow Now, Emily Murphy, the founder of the popular website and podcast Pass the…
Chris Thomas is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist who is interested in how people are changing the Earth’s biodiversity. He has written over 300 scientific articles on topics as varied as showing that animal species have shifted their distributions closer to the poles as the climate has warmed, how butterflies navigate fragments of remaining habitats as they move through human-altered landscapes, and how invasive plants are increasing rather than reducing biological diversity. Chris is today Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York in England. His popular book Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction was among The Times, Economist & Guardian Books of the Year for 2017.
This book is full of surprises, taking
on the thorny issue of where different species come from, where people think
they belong, and what people are doing about it. Written in an entertaining
way, Ken Thompson takes on those who hate and try to kill species simply
because they perceive them to be in the wrong place. First, he establishes the
science, pointing out that many species evolved in places that you wouldn't
guess…. Camels did not evolve in western Asia or North Africa originally, but I
won’t spoil the story.
Most species evolved somewhere but today survive
somewhere else. This is obvious to someone like Thompson, whose career
has been based in Sheffield in England, which was at the edge of an ice sheet a
mere 20,000 years ago. Virtually all of the species that live in and
around Sheffield today only colonised the area in the last 10,000…
The ecologist and author of Do We Need Pandas? “presents a stimulating challenge to our perceptions of nature” and non-native species (George Monbiot).
You may be surprised to learn that camels evolved and lived for tens of millions of years in North America—and also that the leek, national symbol of Wales, was a Roman import to Britain, as were chickens, rabbits and pheasants. These classic examples highlight the issues of “native” and “invasive” species. We have all heard the horror stories of invasives wreaking havoc on ecosystems. But do we need to fear invaders?
As an economist at the European Commission, Adjunct Professor in Paris, former fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and now a first-time author, I thrive at the intersection of academia, think-tanks, and policy-making. My academic soul leads me to seek answers to the big questions: what is economic growth and how does it relate to the success of civilization, to science and technology, to people’s wellbeing, and to nature. My practical focus leads me to draw the policy implications of all this for how we ought to fight climate change. My critics accuse me of being an optimist. I take it as a compliment: the future of humanity is in our hands.
Because the speed at which the atmosphere is warming is unprecedented in human history, we are prone to assume we are facing an unprecedented climatic challenge. However, this is not entirely true.
Archeologists Fagan and Durrani remind us that, at least locally, the climate has changed several times in the past, profoundly affecting the history of civilizations that were less advanced than ours. Some societies were able to deploy technical and social innovation to buffer environmental shocks. Others proved too rigid, slow and eventually collapsed.
To me the lesson is clear: history can be an important ally when charting the policy path ahead in a warming world.
Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From Ancient Egypt to Rome to the Maya, some of history's mightiest civilizations have been felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought.
The challenges are no less great today. We face hurricanes and megafires and food shortages and more. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: the past. Our knowledge of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the last decade, to the point where we…
I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
Steve’s book is analytically challenging, but he has great examples and a knack for conceptualizing the core problems that are making it so hard for our world to grapple with climate change and things like mass extinction. He shows how there are three interlocking problems that all go back to how the modern state system was created as something competitive and uncoordinated, abstract from the land it’s on, and short-sighted with its politics.
Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to…
I have always loved reading about individuals and the ways they behave in extraordinary or unusual circumstances. Stories that are about a person growing up and coming to an understanding that the world around them is deeply flawed, and that they themselves are patched-up, imperfect creatures, fascinate me. I find myself observing people and the words they say. Those are the kinds of stories I write, about regular people stumbling along and discovering some truths about themselves.
Bunny is an American teenager in Azerbaijan. Her father is a diplomat. She grows up in a world where oil is everything, listening to the language of the adults around her as some want their share of the profits reaped by this energy source while (a few) others point out the inequities in this industry and its potential long-term effects on the world.
What is fascinating as well is how she herself becomes part of this same world when she is an adult, almost as if she cannot help but be subsumed by the vast structure of the oil industry.
“A masterpiece of misdirection.” ―Geraldine Brooks
“Mobility is a truly gripping coming-of-age story about navigating a world of corporate greed that’s both laugh-out-loud funny and politically incisive.” ―Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor
Bunny Glenn believes in climate change. But she also likes to get paid.
The year is 1998. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is a lonely American teenager in Azerbaijan with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s bemused eyes, we watch global interests flock to her temporary backyard for Caspian oil and pipeline access, hearing rumbles of the expansion…
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