100 books like Whole Earth Discipline

By Stewart Brand,

Here are 100 books that Whole Earth Discipline fans have personally recommended if you like Whole Earth Discipline. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India

K. Ullas Karanth Author Of Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

From my list on the world’s most popular wild animal.

Why am I passionate about this?

This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can. 

K.'s book list on the world’s most popular wild animal

K. Ullas Karanth Why did K. love this book?

George Schaller is my idol and hero. His book inspired me when I was just 17 years old, then a reluctant student of engineering. It was the beacon of scientific clarity that focused my passion for tigers and nature towards clear-headed action, motivating me to struggle for over a decade and change my career to one devoted to the pursuit of tiger biology and conservation. It is a superb popular science book, in which the writing also rises to the highest literary quality-one that takes you right into the world of beleaguered tigers of India in the early 1960s.  

By George B. Schaller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Deer and the Tiger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Deer and the Tiger is Schaller's detailed account of the ecology and behavior of Bengal tigers and four species of the hoofed mammals on which they prey, based on his observations in India's Kanha National Park.

"This book is a treasure house of biological information and it is also a delight to read. . . . Excellent phoographs accompany the text."-Robert K. Enders, American Scientist

"The one book that has been my greatest source of inspiration is The Deer and the Tiger by George Schaller, based on the first ever scientific field study of the tiger. . . .…


Book cover of Tiger Moon: Tracking the Great Cats in Nepal

K. Ullas Karanth Author Of Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

From my list on the world’s most popular wild animal.

Why am I passionate about this?

This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can. 

K.'s book list on the world’s most popular wild animal

K. Ullas Karanth Why did K. love this book?

Sunquists were my mentors who introduced me to the methods of safely catching wild tigers and radio-tracking them skillfully thereafter. Mel, a pioneer in large carnivore telemetry studies, and Fiona, an accomplished naturalist, writer and wildlife photographer, have collaborated in this book that describes in detail the first ever radio-tracking study of wild tigers they conducted in Chitwan Park Nepal in the early 1970s. It brilliantly captures the ecology of these tigers, the social context of conservation in Nepal, and their own love affair that blossoms after a chance encounter in the park. The sparkling, witty narrative and the accurate tiger science encased within it, make this a memorable read. 

By Fiona Sunquist, Mel Sunquist,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tiger Moon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Tiger Moon" is the powerful, poetic story of the Sunquists' two years studying tigers in Nepal. A new afterword tells the story of promising efforts to reconnect fractured Nepalese tiger habitats.


Book cover of Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans

K. Ullas Karanth Author Of Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

From my list on the world’s most popular wild animal.

Why am I passionate about this?

This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can. 

K.'s book list on the world’s most popular wild animal

K. Ullas Karanth Why did K. love this book?

This is a non-fiction classic about ‘tiger culture’ of a remote part of India where tigers do not fear humans as they do elsewhere: in fact, they even hunt down and eat dozens of people every year in this giant Sundarbans swamp where natural prey is scarce. Montgomery is brilliantly evocative while bringing to life both nature and humans of the swamp, making the book a NY Times best-seller. The local culture, where tigers are loathed, feared, and revered as deities—all at the same—is portrayed stunningly. These habitats, tiger behaviors, and local cultures are strikingly different from the ones I describe in my book. Montgomery views the tiger through a filter of human culture, whereas I do so through a filter of hard ecology. Yet, we admire each other’s work because we are both under the spell of the same tiger.   

By Sy Montgomery,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spell of the Tiger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the author of The Soul of an Octopus and bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig, a book that earned Sy Montgomery her status as one of the most celebrated wildlife writers of our time, Spell of the Tiger brings readers to the Sundarbans, a vast tangle of mangrove swamp and tidal delta that lies between India and Bangladesh. It is the only spot on earth where tigers routinely eat people-swimming silently behind small boats at night to drag away fishermen, snatching honey collectors and woodcutters from the forest. But, unlike in other parts of Asia where tigers are rapidly…


Book cover of Tiger-Wallahs: Encounters With the Men Who Tried to Save the Greatest of the Great Cats

K. Ullas Karanth Author Of Among Tigers: Fighting to Bring Back Asia's Big Cats

From my list on the world’s most popular wild animal.

Why am I passionate about this?

This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can. 

K.'s book list on the world’s most popular wild animal

K. Ullas Karanth Why did K. love this book?

Geoff is an eminent Historian having scripted many classics such as the Civil War TV series and, Diane, is a former Newsweek journalist who has reported on environmental issues. Both are tiger-keen aficionados’ who are—for some unfathomable reason—also morbidly fascinated by generations of gritty, grimy, and aggravatingly stubborn conservationists in India, who have fought to save India’s wild tigers through the colonial and post-colonial eras. They also write in an engaging, witty style focusing on tiger-obsessed humans rather than the magnificent cat. As one of their ‘subjects’ I believe this book provides the appropriate social and historical contexts for my own book.  

By Geoffrey C. Ward, Diane Raines Ward,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tiger-Wallahs as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Describes efforts to save the Indian tiger from extinction, and why those efforts seemed doomed to failure


Book cover of Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change

Robert O. Schneider Author Of An Unmitigated Disaster: America's Response to COVID-19

From my list on the “war” between politics and science.

Why am I passionate about this?

My research and writing in the field of emergency or disaster management has been focused on the concept of hazard mitigation. This means reducing the impact of disasters, the creation of hazard resilient and sustainable communities, and the application of scientific and technical expertise to the task. We all live in a world where it has become more important than ever to make intelligent decisions driven by a comprehension of the properties of the physical universe. It is also a world in which economic self-interest and political interests may impede that idealistic goal. I have a sense of urgency about reducing the efficacy of such impediments.      

Robert's book list on the “war” between politics and science

Robert O. Schneider Why did Robert love this book?

When I began to focus on and assess climate change as an emergency or disaster management issue, especially in the context of recurring natural disasters, this book by Andrew Guzman struck a nerve that helped me focus on what mattered most.

The human costs associated with what would be the catastrophic consequences of our failure to address what the author suggests is the greatest threat to human civilization are mind-blowing, to say the least.  This is an excellent, if somewhat scary, overview. 

By Andrew T. Guzman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Overheated as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.

In Overheated, Guzman takes climate change out of the realm of scientific abstraction to explore its real-world consequences. He writes not as a scientist, but as an authority on international law and economics. He takes as his starting point…


Book cover of The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World

Robert S. Pindyck Author Of Climate Future: Averting and Adapting to Climate Change

From my list on climate change and what to do about it.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an economist who has written broadly on microeconomics, energy and natural resource markets, and environmental economics. My recent work in environmental economics has focused on climate change, and I’ve published a book and many articles on the topic. I think it’s important to understand that while there is a lot we understand about climate change, there is also much we don’t understand, and what the uncertainty implies about what we should do. My concern is the possibility of a climate catastrophe. What are the chances, and what should we do? Those questions have driven much of my research and writing. 

Robert's book list on climate change and what to do about it

Robert S. Pindyck Why did Robert love this book?

Nordhaus was one of the first economists to explain the nature of climate change and why dealing with it is of economic importance.  In this book, he uses his DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate and Economy) model to help explain --- at a textbook level --- how unrestricted GHG emissions can cause climate change to occur and lead to serious problems in the future. He also utilizes the model to illustrate some of the uncertainties we face when thinking about the climate system and when trying to predict the changes to expect under different policies. The book thereby provides students (and others) with a good introduction to climate change policy.

Book cover of When Time Is Short: Finding Our Way in the Anthropocene

Julia M. O’Brien Author Of Prophets beyond Activism: Rethinking the Prophetic Roots of Social Justice

From my list on the Bible and the climate crisis.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a biblical scholar for over 35 years and have spent a lot of time reading and writing academic volumes, analyzing arguments, and teaching diverse audiences. However, some of my formative experiences were as a child on my grandparents’ North Carolina farm, to which I still feel an almost elemental connection. Perhaps that farm (and my vegetable gardening) first sparked my interest in the environment. My interest turned to advocacy through research, which set me on the path to grasping the urgency of the climate crisis and my conviction that everything must reflect this reality. I’ve poured over the scientific reports (such as by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and read lots of nonfiction. 

Julia's book list on the Bible and the climate crisis

Julia M. O’Brien Why did Julia love this book?

I am in awe of Tim Beal’s ability to write about heavy subjects engagingly and invitingly. His question is deadly serious: now that humanity faces extinction due to the climate crisis, how should we live? He finds answers (or at least guideposts) in an honest (and, for some, untraditional) reading of the Bible, in which he finds resources for what faces us.

This book helped me face climate realities without dissolving into despair. I felt he was helping me reach the “acceptance” stage of grief about Earth. 

By Timothy Beal,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked When Time Is Short as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With faith, hope, and compassion, acclaimed religion scholar Timothy Beal shows us how to navigate the inevitabilities of the climate crisis and the very real—and very near—possibility of human extinction

What if it’s too late to save ourselves from climate crisis? When Time is Short is a meditation for what may be a finite human future that asks how we got here to help us imagine a different relationship to the natural world.

Modern capitalism, as it emerged, drew heavily upon the Christian belief in human exceptionalism and dominion over the planet, and these ideas still undergird our largely secular…


Book cover of A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change

Jeremy Bendik-Keymer Author Of Involving Anthroponomy in the Anthropocene: On Decoloniality

From my list on how we got to climate change and mass extinction.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Jeremy's book list on how we got to climate change and mass extinction

Jeremy Bendik-Keymer Why did Jeremy love this book?

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.

By Stephen M. Gardiner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Perfect Moral Storm as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of This Is Not A Drill

Emily Andrews Author Of Climate Adaptation: Accounts of Resilience, Self-Sufficiency and Systems Change

From my list on adaptation to climate change.

Why am I passionate about this?

For the publication of our book, Climate Adaptation: Accounts of Resilience, Self-Sufficiency and Systems Change, I have worked closely with activists and academics from around the world, hearing more about the work they do and the unique and individual ways they have made adaptations within their communities. This experience has allowed me to have a deeper understanding of climate adaptation as a topic, both in a scientific and a cultural sense, thus meaning I have been more readily able to recognise the qualities of a great adaptation book!

Emily's book list on adaptation to climate change

Emily Andrews Why did Emily love this book?

Subtitled An Extinction Rebellion Handbook, this is a fascinating and informative read on how communities can come together to take action. Extinction Rebellion may have sparked controversy, but it is undeniable that their tactics have brought them to the forefront of news channels, ultimately bringing climate change into conversations more than ever before. 

By Extinction Rebellion,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked This Is Not A Drill as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Extinction Rebellion are inspiring a whole generation to take action on climate breakdown.
Now you can become part of the movement - and together, we can make history.

It's time. This is our last chance to do anything about the global climate and ecological emergency. Our last chance to save the world as we know it.

Now or never, we need to be radical. We need to rise up. And we need to rebel.

Extinction Rebellion is a global activist movement of ordinary people, demanding action from Governments. This is a book of truth and action. It has facts to…


Book cover of No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Julian Caldecott Author Of Water: Life in Every Drop

From my list on building peace with nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started off studying tropical rainforest creatures and saw the catastrophic impacts of modern humanity on nature and indigenous peoples. My work then focused on how to resolve conflicts between people and nature, at first in and around national parks and then more widely. I became quite good at dissecting environmental aid portfolios, and writing up what I had found in a series of books. I was also drawn into the great climate protests of 2019 and 2020, and now I'm working on pulling it all together into a book on Restoring Peace with Nature.

Julian's book list on building peace with nature

Julian Caldecott Why did Julian love this book?

I was in Parliament Square at Samhain, 31 Oct 2018, when the Extinction Rebellion began. Greta Thunberg spoke there, but the mic broke so she paused at every sentence for the front rank to call out her words to those behind. The potent archetype of a virgin girl-child speaking truth to power worked its traditional magic, by exalting a thousand people, including me. Fast-forward a few years, and millions on the streets, and this little book condenses the motivation and message of climate activism: “Everyone and everything needs to change. Make the best available science the heart of politics and democracy. We must start today. We have no more excuses.” Greta offers everything important that we have been trying to say for decades. She encourages us to unify our divided minds and purposes. To me this is worthy of the most passionate engagement.

By Greta Thunberg,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The #1 New York Times bestseller by Time's 2019 Person of the Year

"Greta Thunberg is already one of our planet's greatest advocates." -Barack Obama

The groundbreaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has become the voice of a generation, including her historic address to the United Nations

In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a…


Book cover of The Deer and the Tiger: A Study of Wildlife in India
Book cover of Tiger Moon: Tracking the Great Cats in Nepal
Book cover of Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans

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