Books for a Better Planet: Reading for World Environment Day (June 5)

World Environment Day is the United Nations day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment.

Updated June 1, 2024
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Rising : dispatches from the new American shore
Rush, Elizabeth A.
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018 A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018 ...
The uninhabitable earth : life after warming
Wallace-Wells, David
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon."--Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY...
Losing Earth : a recent history
Rich, Nathaniel
Paper Book
By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change--including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act...
Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?
Waal, F. B. M. de
Paper Book
What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future--all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet's preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been...
Salvage the bones : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn.
Paper Book
Winner of the National Book AwardThe National Book Award winning novel from the author of Let Us Descend and Men We Reaped--a gritty but tender story of family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico,...
Fen, bog & swamp : a short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis
Proulx, Annie
Paper Book
*Named a Best Book of the Year byThe New Yorker and Literary Hub!* A Finalist for the 2022 NBCC Awards in Nonfiction, the 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the NEIBA 2023 New England Book Award* From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting...
Finding the mother tree : discovering the wisdom of the forest
Simard, S.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest--a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery "Finding the Mother Tree...
Gathering moss : a natural and cultural history of mosses
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.
Audiobook
Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.Robin Wall...
Hope matters : why changing the way we think is critical to solving the environmental crisis
Kelsey, Elin
Paper Book
"This book comes at just the right moment. It is NOT too late if we get together and take action, NOW." --Jane Goodall Fears about climate change are fueling an epidemic of despair across the world: adults worry about their children's future; thirty-somethings...
Fire weather : a true story from a hotter world
Vaillant, John
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST * A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR * FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION * A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the...
Braiding sweetgrass
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member...
The end of Eden : wild nature in the age of climate breakdown
Welz, Adam
Paper Book
New Yorker Best Book of the Year "Exquisite."--DAVID WALLACE-WELLS "At once an elegy and an exhortation."--ELIZABETH KOLBERT "A book that goes deeper than any before into the meaning of the climate breakdown for all the rest of creation."--BILL McKIBBEN...
The climate book
Thunberg, Greta
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER We still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed...

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