10 books like The Uninhabitable Earth

By David Wallace-Wells,

Here are 10 books that authors have personally recommended if you like The Uninhabitable Earth. Shepherd is a community of 7,000+ authors sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

Wayne Visser Author Of Thriving: The Breakthrough Movement to Regenerate Nature, Society, and the Economy

From the list on creating a thriving future.

Who am I?

All my life, I have been fascinated by nature, curious about society, and concerned about the impact we are having on the life of our planet. This interest has given me the opportunity to spend more than 30 years looking for solutions to our negative impacts on nature and society. As I have travelled to 77 countries and written 41 books, I have tried to capture and share what I have learned on my journey of exploration. I am especially inspired by the positive difference business can make by turning breakdowns into breakthrough innovation. My purpose is to share the science and practice of how to create a thriving future. 

Wayne's book list on creating a thriving future

Discover why each book is one of Wayne's favorite books on creating a thriving future .

Why this book?

I must confess that I didn’t start out as a Bill Gates fan. But in the wake of his Microsoft career, his proactive investments in start-up companies that could transform our society for the better started to capture my attention. When I read his book climate solutions, I became convinced of his analytical and entrepreneurial genius. He approaches climate breakdown with the pragmatic optimism of a venture capitalist. One of his most compelling insights are his “green premium” calculations for major sectors, which effectively measure the price gap between current solutions and emerging technologies. This provides a clear indication of the most appropriate investment strategies for given technologies – all with the urgent goal of halving carbon emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. 

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

By Bill Gates,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked How to Avoid a Climate Disaster as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions…


The Second World War

By Antony Beevor,

Book cover of The Second World War

Adam Nevill Author Of Lost Girl

From the list on Armageddon.

Who am I?

I'm continually asked why I write horror. But I wonder why every writer isn't writing horror. Not a day passes without me being aghast at the world and my own species, the present, past and future. Though nor do I stop searching for a sense of awe and wonder in the world either. My Dad read ghost stories to me as a kid and my inner tallow candle was lit. The flame still burns. Horror has always been the fiction I have felt compelled to write in order to process the world, experience, observation, my imaginative life. I've been blessed with a good readership and have entered my third decade as a writer of horrors. In that time two of my novels have been adapted into films and the British Fantasy Society has kindly recognised my work with five awards, one for Best Collection and four for Best Novel. I'm in this for the long haul and aim to be creating horror on both page and screen for some time to come.

Adam's book list on Armageddon

Discover why each book is one of Adam's favorite books on Armageddon .

Why this book?

It's too easy to dismiss the Second World War. To relegate that epochal conflict into realms of ancient history, action films, kitset models, unread Father's day gifts, and black & white footage. But we all live through the consequences of this epic global struggle. This was the last time western civilisation brought itself close to destruction and it was a close call. 60 million lives were lost and no one died easily. The war was also raging just shy of 80 years ago. In the scheme of human history, that's recent.

Beevor's history of the global conflict - and it was global - is a page-turning affair. Vivid, engaging, heartbreaking, shocking. Really fine storytelling and a first class history, encompassing the great conflicts of east and west (China's experience of the war is much overlooked in the west but not in these pages). I found myself engrossed by this monumental…

The Second World War

By Antony Beevor,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Second World War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A magisterial, single-volume history of the greatest conflict the world has ever known by our foremost military historian.

The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from…


The Overstory

By Richard Powers,

Book cover of The Overstory

Nina Munteanu Author Of A Diary in the Age of Water

From the list on eco-fiction that make you care and give you hope.

Who am I?

The environment and how we treat it has always been important to me since I was a child. My passion for storytelling morphed into writing, but the underlying spark came through environmental activism. I got a university degree in aquatic ecology, published numerous papers, and now write eco-fiction that is grounded in accurate science with a focus on human ingenuity and compassion. The most meaningful and satisfying eco-fiction is ultimately optimistic literature that explores serious issues with heroic triumph. Each of these favourites intimately connects human to environment. Each moved me to cry, think, and deeply care. 

Nina's book list on eco-fiction that make you care and give you hope

Discover why each book is one of Nina's favorite books on eco-fiction that make you care and give you hope .

Why this book?

What resonated with me on so many levels was the author’s use of lyrical and beautiful language in describing trees and forests: as characters. I’m an ecologist and I felt a particular kinship with the botanist Patricia Westerford, a disabled introvert who must swim against the hegemonic tide with heretical ideas. When she argues that trees communicate, learn, trade goods and services, have intelligence and society, her scientific peers ridicule her and end her university career. This story is as much her triumph over overwhelming challenges as it is about the dwindling majestic forests that must quietly endure our careless apathy as they continue to offer their gift of life-giving oxygen and medicinal aerosols for hundreds of years. 

The Overstory

By Richard Powers,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked The Overstory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…


Book cover of The War of the Worlds

Justin Oldham Author Of Crisis at the Kodiak Starport

From the list on the environmental impacts of war.

Who am I?

I was a child of the Cold War. When the 20th Century ended, many of my peers and I thought we’d put the specter of annihilation behind us. As much as I’ve always been a fan of all things post-apocalyptic, I must acknowledge that we now face new threats that are just as much of our own making as the nuclear nightmare was. When I think about the future, I don’t see or foresee a dark and dismal end. I envision a bright future that will be a lot harder to achieve than we ever thought. I look forward to creating heroes and heroines who can make that future possible.

Justin's book list on the environmental impacts of war

Discover why each book is one of Justin's favorite books on the environmental impacts of war .

Why this book?

This steam-age portrayal of an alien invasion grabbed my attention when I was in grade school. The author’s description of burning cities and forests painted a picture of ecological horror in my imagination. The impact of that has stayed with me, so much so that I have included the ecological consequences of war in much of what I have written.

The War of the Worlds

By H.G. Wells,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked The War of the Worlds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

But planet Earth was not only being watched - soon it would be invaded by monstrous creatures from Mars who strode about the land in great mechanical tripods, bringing death and destruction with them. What can possibly stop an invading army equipped with heat-rays and poisonous black gas, intent on wiping out the human race? This is one man's story of that incredible invasion, from the time the first Martians land near his home town, to the destruction of London. Is this the end of human life on Earth?


Collapse

By Jared Diamond,

Book cover of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

Ray Cunningham Author Of The Post-Growth Project: How the End of Economic Growth Could Bring a Fairer and Happier Society

From the list on our fatal addiction to economic growth.

Who am I?

In my career, I managed research into how the problems of modern industrial society are tackled in different countries. This reflected my own comparative instinct, which arose out of growing up bilingual and at home in two cultures. My journey into politics, sociology, and economics made me increasingly aware of the blindness of our social arrangements to the growing ecological crisis – and of how this blindness is perpetuated by the narrow silos of our political and academic systems. Our only hope now lies with thinkers who can escape those silos and integrate different perspectives into a holistic understanding. We don’t need more specialists, but generalists. Fewer economists, more moral philosophers. 

Ray's book list on our fatal addiction to economic growth

Discover why each book is one of Ray's favorite books on our fatal addiction to economic growth .

Why this book?

Diamond shows, with a stunning depth and range of reference, how a failure to live within ecological limits has been the ultimate cause of the collapse of human societies through the ages. A riveting and terrifying read, and a stark warning of the consequences of our blind fixation on growth – at a planetary level as well as that of individual societies.

Collapse

By Jared Diamond,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Collapse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations.

Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future.

What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island?
What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids?
Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the…


The Road

By Cormac McCarthy,

Book cover of The Road

L.R. Knight Author Of The Trials of the Lion

From the list on fantasy to put some fire in your blood.

Who am I?

I am a world traveler and educator, a student of psychology and myth, and a lover of the wild and ancient places. I believe that sword and sorcery, the vanguard of modern fantasy, is overdue for a comeback. These tales echo the trials of Hercules, the rage of Achilles, and the melancholy of Gilgamesh and Beowulf, to name a few. There is much yet to learn: I write to stir my readers’ blood, and to examine the lessons of the epics: that man must face down the inhuman and monstrous to discover himself; that we cannot truly live until we have borne a great trial of our own. Stay fierce!

L.R.'s book list on fantasy to put some fire in your blood

Discover why each book is one of L.R.'s favorite books on fantasy to put some fire in your blood .

Why this book?

I read The Road when I was working three jobs, enrolled in university full-time, and trying to figure out what it meant to be an adult. I felt the gut-punch bleakness of McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic future, and yet despite all the gray, grim privation, I found hope in the Man and the Boy’s march toward…something. While it’s not quite a fantasy, the ashen world rendered in McCarthy’s beautifully austere language changed the way I write, and changed the way I read. There is a sobering warning that I hear echoed in The Odyssey and Gilgamesh; something like an Ozymandian warning: look upon the works of man, ye mortal: all this shall fade. The Road stays with you like a scar, but one you earned, that taught you something.

The Road

By Cormac McCarthy,

Why should I read it?

24 authors picked The Road as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle).

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if…


The End of Nature

By Bill McKibben,

Book cover of The End of Nature

Todd Dufresne Author Of The Democracy of Suffering: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, Philosophy in the Anthropocene

From the list on how bad climate change is for life on Earth.

Who am I?

Climate Studies is a massive, cross-disciplinary field that exceeds the grasp of everyone involved, myself included. I start from my home discipline, philosophy, and follow the leads wherever they take me—a practice I learned from decades as a Freud scholar. The climate books I admire most are those that take this vast literature and synthesize the issues. This means I admire and respect the work being done by smart journalists like McKibben, Klein, and Wallace-Wells, who are perfect jumping-off points to thinking carefully about the future of life today. They are the ‘journalist-philosophers’ who are attempting these essential first drafts of history. Start with them and see where it all leads. 

Todd's book list on how bad climate change is for life on Earth

Discover why each book is one of Todd's favorite books on how bad climate change is for life on Earth .

Why this book?

McKibben is an American journalist, researcher, and founder of the environmental organization 350.org. His End of Nature is one of the first trade books to address climate change. Written in clear, accessible language, McKibben argues that nature has been thoroughly subjected to human forces that forever undermine traditional views of an environment set apart, pristine and original, from the things we have done to it. The biggest thing we’ve done is increase the average temperature above industrial norms, and this book is a classic framing of this issue. 

The End of Nature

By Bill McKibben,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The End of Nature as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the earliest warnings about climate change and one of environmentalism's lodestars

'Nature, we believe, takes forever. It moves with infinite slowness,' begins the first book to bring climate change to public attention.

Interweaving lyrical observations from his life in the Adirondack Mountains with insights from the emerging science, Bill McKibben sets out the central developments not only of the environmental crisis now facing us but also the terms of our response, from policy to the fundamental, philosophical shift in our relationship with the natural world which, he argues, could save us. A moving elegy to nature in its…


The Fifth Season

By N.K. Jemisin,

Book cover of The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1

Katrina Archer Author Of The Tree of Souls

From the list on characters who don’t trust themselves.

Who am I?

I’ve always loved characters with ambiguous morals, and the inherent tension they bring to stories: their path from ruin to redemption, the examination of their past misdeeds that requires them to choose what kind of person they want to be. As a former software engineer, I was traumatized by the Polytechnique massacre in Montréal, which happened while I was studying at a neighboring university, and in which fourteen women were murdered. I don’t consider its perpetrator redeemable, but after I wrote The Tree of Souls, I realized its character arcs were me trying to understand why people do bad things and forcing my characters to confront the pain they’d caused.

Katrina's book list on characters who don’t trust themselves

Discover why each book is one of Katrina's favorite books on characters who don’t trust themselves .

Why this book?

The Broken Earth trilogy, of which The Fifth Season is the first book, three-peated at the Hugo Awards, for good reason. Jemisin masterfully weaves the tale of Essun, Damaya, and Syenite, ostensibly unconnected orogenes, a class of people capable of controlling the titanic tectonic forces at play in a world wracked by geological destruction. Because of their immense power—and the fact that they sometimes unintentionally kill living things when angry—orogenes are distrusted by wider society, and shackled in a number of literal and figurative ways. Essun in particular must deal with the grief and trauma of her past actions and experiences, in this unflinching examination of oppression by an author at the peak of her craft. Unputdownable, Jemisin is one of the few writers on my “autobuy” list.

The Fifth Season

By N.K. Jemisin,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked The Fifth Season as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)

This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.

It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

This is the Stillness, a land…


The Great Derangement

By Amitav Ghosh,

Book cover of The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

Andrew J. Hoffman Author Of How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate

From the list on the future in a climate changed world.

Who am I?

Today, we're faced with massive shifts in the environment that challenge who we are as humans. Scientists have proposed that we have left the Holocene and entered the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, to mark the significance of our increasingly dominant role in a changing environment. But the problem right now is that we are having trouble seeing the future that is revealing itself because we continue to see it in our old ways of knowing. The books I have chosen show us the world that is coming. My hope is that, where some will resist the message of scientists, more may be swayed by writers, painters, photographers, musicians, and filmmakers.

Andrew's book list on the future in a climate changed world

Discover why each book is one of Andrew's favorite books on the future in a climate changed world .

Why this book?

In this beautifully written book, Ghosh tackles a central question that really motivates me. How do we describe the world we are changing? In answering this question, Ghosh ponders why climate change is so hard to explain; why it is so hard to write about in novels and fiction. For me, this book is a thought-provoking quest into both the need for evocative literature on this topic and the hazards of drifting into science fiction or being dismissed as alarmist non-fiction. But in his explanation of the challenges of communicating climate change, Ghosh gave me a stronger vocabulary for doing so.

The Great Derangement

By Amitav Ghosh,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Great Derangement as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the…


The Botany of Desire

By Michael Pollan,

Book cover of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

Ngoc Minh Ngo Author Of In Bloom: Creating and Living With Flowers

From the list on why everyone loves gardening.

Who am I?

I am a photographer of gardens and botanical still-lifes. I have a passion for plants and flowers and love reading about their historical and cultural significance. I am always curious about the meanings that humankind has ascribed to flowers in different cultures and eras. I have written and photographed three books that revolve around my passion for flowers.

Ngoc's book list on why everyone loves gardening

Discover why each book is one of Ngoc's favorite books on why everyone loves gardening .

Why this book?

Another author of wide-ranging intellect, Pollan takes us through the history of the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato from the viewpoint of the plants. The chapters on the apple and the tulip are my favorites. Pollan has me looking at my favorite flowers in new ways – rose and peony, in his view, are Dionysian flowers, “deeply sensual” while the tulip is Apollonian, all clarity and order. But beauty, as defined by the Greeks, is when “Apollonian form and Dionysian ecstasy are held in balance,” thus the most beautiful flowers are “the ones that partake of their opposing elements.” Pollan’s brief history of flowers ends with an idea that forms the basis of my work: “There, somehow, both transcendence and necessity. Could that be it–right there, in a flower–the meaning of life?”

The Botany of Desire

By Michael Pollan,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Botany of Desire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A farmer cultivates genetically modified potatoes so that a customer at McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the autumn and in the spring has a riotous patch of colour to admire. Two simple examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? In blending history, memoir and…


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