Here are 100 books that Climate and Society in Europe fans have personally recommended if you like
Climate and Society in Europe.
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As an engineer, scientist, and historian, I’ve always been fascinated by how science has always served the political goals of nations and empires. Today, we look at the Space Race to land a person on the Moon as a part of the Cold War effort to establish the intellectual and cultural dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, even as it created new technologies and completely changed our understanding of the world. When I came across the Geodesic Mission to the Equator 1735-1744, I realized that even in the 18th century, voyages of discovery could do more than simply find new lands to conquer and exploit–they could, and did extend our knowledge of nature and mankind.
Alexander von Humboldt’s name is synonymous with scientific discovery today–the Humboldt Current, the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and countless species named for him. Humboldt revolutionized our modern understanding of the natural sciences–geology, biology, meteorology, and much else–with his epic five-year voyage that set off in 1799 and brought him through the Amazon, the Caribbean, and North and South America.
Like Malaspina before him, Humboldt studied not only the flora and fauna of these regions but also their peoples and the political turmoil that was building towards revolution. He met with the leaders of the time–Thomas Jefferson and Simón Bolívar among them–and opened their eyes to the richness of their lands. Unlike Malaspina, Humboldt’s works were published to wide acclaim and established the idea that all nature, including human nature, is interconnected.
WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016
'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson
'Dazzling' Literary Review
'Brilliant' Sunday Express
'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist
'A superb biography' The Economist
'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Having grown up in a low-income neighborhood of housing projects as the son of bohemian artists, I always had a keen interest in understanding why some people got ahead while others floundered. Being a sociology professor at Princeton only got me so far. I had to get another Ph.D. in biology to understand that it was not nature or nurture that makes us who we are but the combination of our unique genetic inheritance and our particular social circumstances. The books I recommended all tackle the question of nature and nurture from one angle or another. Hope you enjoy them and learn as much as I did reading them.
Who wouldn’t want to know where we came from and how we got here? The new science of ancient DNA has upended so many notions about our past that we had held dear.
I loved how Reich—a leader in this field—explained this new science so accessibly and with great stories to boot. Everything I knew about human history was wrong!
The past few years have witnessed a revolution in our ability to obtain DNA from ancient humans. This important new data has added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up remarkable surprises.
The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations living today are mixes of ancient ones, and often carry a genetic component from archaic humans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising…
I love books on our living world that take a wide perspective, employ a simple and clear voice, are intellectually appealing, and are conclusive. Bringing things ‘to the point’ has been my own principle of academic teaching for decades. Teaching plant sciences across all grades, I always tried to be ‘emotionally touching’ because this is the best way to create lasting knowledge. I am convinced that good science does not require jargon and can sell in everyday, common language and does best, if it goes to heart. The books I am listing, adopt this principles of communication. They open an arena of basic natural science knowledge about the world we are part of.
This is the best book to understand the roots of modern science. Unbelievable discoveries 2,500 years before the present: the size of the moon, of earth and the sun, and the distances had been known quite precisely; the planetary system was understood; the first geographical information system for the round (!) plant earth was designed; the first (hydraulically driven) computer was constructed to model astronomic events. A masterpiece, extremely well written by two science journalists that distilled the essence of early mathematics, physics, astronomy, mechanics, and geography
A short history of nearly everything classical. The foundations of the modern world were laid in Alexandria of Egypt at the turn of the first millennium. In this compulsively readable narrative, Justin Pollard and Howard Reid bring one of history's most fascinating and prolific cities to life, creating a treasure trove of our intellectual and cultural origins. Famous for its lighthouse, its library-the greatest in antiquity-and its fertile intellectual and spiritual life--it was here that Christianity and Islam came to prominence as world religions--Alexandria now takes its rightful place alongside Greece and Rome as a titan of the ancient world.…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I lived in Paris for six months when I researched and wrote my first Paris book, One Thousand Buildings of Paris, walking every quarter of Paris including some rather dicey areas. I discovered most Parisians don’t wander very far from their own neighborhoods, and casual tourists tend to stay in the center. The first time my boyfriend and I went to Paris together, I planned daily excursions to all the neighborhoods where he had never been. We became flaneurs (wanderers) at outdoor markets, small museums, parks, and we ventured into unknown spaces. There is always something fascinating to discover in Paris and new ways to gain a sense of history.
Written by a prominent British ceramicist, this memoir is remarkable for its research and depth into the background of the writer’s forgotten Jewish heritage and five generations of his ancestors, the Ephrussis, who immigrated to Paris where, in the Nineteenth Century, they built a banking dynasty from Vienna to Paris.
After inheriting a collection of 264 netsuke—Japanese wood and ivory carvings—de Waal starts digging into the past to uncover the mystery behind the netsuke and why they survived when most of the family perished at the hands of the Nazis.
This is another WWII story that illuminates the tragic events of the period and the life of wealthy patrons of the arts and their interaction with artists in Paris.
264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie's Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.
From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siecle Paris, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo, Edmund de Waal traces the netsuke's journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.
I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.
As with most of the other thrillers among the five on my list, this one too—like Rosser’s other novels in the genre—combines solid research and scientific knowledge with gripping international intrigue. Robert Spire, an environmental lawyer, and British GLENCOM (Global Environmental Command) agent is hired to look into the mysterious deaths of two climatologists. Tracked by a sexy Russian spy, he gets enmeshed in uncovering an international conspiracy to melt the Arctic polar ice cap and bring the world to environmental disaster.
Ecological disaster looms in the Arctic. An eminent climatologist drops dead in his London apartment. Appointed executor and lawyer, Robert Spire is about to have his life turned upside down... Having relocated from London to Wales to run his own law firm, Spire is contacted by Doris Stanton, mother of the late UK climatologist Dr. Dale Stanton, with a request that he finds a suitable home for her dead son's legacy - a large sum left to global warming organisations. Spire sets out to investigate, but soon realises his life is in danger as he uncovers a conspiracy with far…
I am an astronomer and educator (Ph.D. Astrophysics, University of Colorado), and I’ve now been teaching about global warming for more than 40 years (in courses on astronomy, astrobiology, and mathematics). While it’s frustrating to see how little progress we’ve made in combatting the ongoing warming during this time, my background as an astronomer gives me a “cosmic perspective” that reminds me that decades are not really so long, and that we still have time to act and to build a “post-global warming future.” I hope my work can help inspire all of us to act while we still can for the benefit of all.
I’ve known for a long time that scientific understanding of global warming has a long history, but I didn’t know very many of the details.
This book filled the gaps in my knowledge, and reminded me that while we still have a lot to learn, the basic science behind global warming has been known for more than a century. I also really appreciate the way this book describes some of the many efforts that have been undertaken to call attention to this issue – many dating back to decades before most people had ever heard of it.
The award-winning book is now revised and expanded.
In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion-by way of unexpected twists and turns-was the story Spencer Weart told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his award-winning account up to date, revised throughout to reflect the latest science and with a new conclusion that shows how the scientific…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
This book pairs particularly well with Stephen Schneider’s book, as it picks up where that book ends. When I met Michael and heard him talk about his experiences, I didn’t think this book would surprise me, but I still found it shocking. Michael is one of the world’s leading climate scientists, and his work was fundamental in identifying the early signs of rising global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s.
But in this book, it’s not the science that is shocking, but the behavior of politicians, lobbyists, and conspiracy theorists, who have turned their attacks on the science into personal and vindictive attacks on the scientists themselves. Michael’s accounts of his battles against misinformation make for important reading for anyone who wants to understand why we’ve been so slow to act on climate change.
The ongoing assault on climate science in the United States has never been more aggressive, more blatant, or more widely publicized than in the case of the Hockey Stick graph-a clear and compelling visual presentation of scientific data, put together by MichaelE. Mann and his colleagues, demonstrating that global temperatures have risen in conjunction with the increase in industrialization and the use of fossil fuels. Here was an easy-to-understand graph that, in a glance, posed a threat to major corporate energy interests and those who do their political bidding. The stakes were simply too high to ignore the Hockey Stick-and…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
This was the first (and still the best) book I ever read on how scientists collect and use the data for forecasting the weather and predicting climate change. I am particularly impressed with its scope–it starts with early attempts by 17th and 18th-century scientists to agree on how to measure things like wind and rainfall and ends with today’s world of satellites and computer models.
The book really brings alive the work of a massive network of scientists around the world collecting and analyzing observations about planet Earth.
The science behind global warming, and its history: how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere, to measure it, to trace its past, and to model its future.
Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, “sound science.” In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations—even from satellites, which can “see” the whole planet with a single instrument—becomes global…
I’ve been teaching in higher education for two decades, and I can honestly say that introducing Carbon Literacy Training as an extra-curricular activity to students and staff, as well as to external stakeholders, to learn about climate solutions has been one of the best things I’ve done in my career. I’ve always had an interest in the environment and sustainability, but struggled with how to communicate. The books I’ve chosen have changed my perspectives and provided positive examples of how we can talk about this in a way that encourages hope and action as opposed to the prevailing doom and gloom or facts and stats that paralyse rather than mobilise.
I loved reading this book as it is so refreshingly different compared to other books in this space.
It focuses on what we can do rather than what we can’t and emphasises that we have more in common than what divides us when it comes to climate change.
And the most important thing we can do about climate change is talk about it based on shared values, and it’s all about discovering what those are, whether it’s family, hobbies, outdoor activities, or faith. Talking about climate change is both a challenge and an encouragement for an introverted (yet social) sustainability academic like me.
I love how down-to-earth Katherine Hayhoe is. The book is peppered with lots of humour and personal anecdotes, yet clearly underpinned by scientific facts, and I finished the book feeling hopeful and inspired.
"An optimistic view on why collective action is still possible-and how it can be realized." -The New York Times
"A must-read if we're serious about enacting positive change from the ground up, in communities, and through human connections and human emotions." -Margaret Atwood, Twitter
United Nations Champion of the Earth, climate scientist, and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe changes the debate on how we can save our future.
Called "one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change" by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our changing planet. A Canadian…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
Stephen Schneider was one of the leading scientists in the early days of climate modeling and one of the first climate scientists to understand the importance of science communication. I think of this book as both a memoir and a political primer for anyone interested in how warnings from climate scientists get attacked and undermined in the media.
The book is particularly good at explaining how the UN’s international reports on climate change came together and why mainstream media networks consistently miss the story when reporting on climate science.
Schneider persuasively outlines a plan to avert the building threat and develop a positive, practical policy that will bring climate change back under our control, help the economy with a new generation of green energy jobs and productivity, and reduce the dependence on unreliable exporters of oil-and thus ensure a future for ourselves and our planet that's as rich with promise as our past.
