Here are 100 books that For the Beauty of the Earth fans have personally recommended if you like
For the Beauty of the Earth.
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I used to think of television as a third parent. As a child of immigrants, I learned a lot about being an American from the media. Soon, I realized there were limits to what I could learn because media and tech privilege profit over community. For 20 years, I have studied what happens when people decide to make media outside of corporations. I have interviewed hundreds of filmmakers, written hundreds of blogs and articles, curated festivals, juried awards, and ultimately founded my own platform, all resulting in four books. My greatest teachers have been artists, healers, and family—chosen and by blood—who have created spaces for honesty, vulnerability, and creative conflict.
This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”
Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.
Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.
She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.
What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I am a clinical social worker and writer of 13 books and more than 40 poems and essays in national magazines and journals. For 20 years, I counseled survivors of violent crimes in individual and group treatment at the Crime Victims Treatment Center in New York. My book recommendations are eclectic, maybe odd, but I read widely for diversion. I set my kitchen timer and try to read every day for at least half an hour. As I age, I read to be soothed, educated, involved, entertained. I no longer finish books that are boring. I used to… but those days are over!
I’m so not a country gal! No to ‘roughing it’. No to the scenic hikes and the bugs that got under my socks and inside my shirt! And the bear I thought I saw crossing the road ahead of me and my friend. So to love Mary Oliver’s poetry of nature came as a great surprise.
Her observational poems bring me to another space. One where there is a curiosity about things I might take for granted: bogs, streams, mushrooms, owls. Her poems bring calm and are soothing when you’re having a painful knee. Mary Oliver almost makes me want to go on a long walk. Well almost!
Mary Oliver was awarded the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems, Volume One. Since its initial appearance it has become one of the best-selling volumes of poetry in the country. This collection features thirty poems published only in this volume as well as selections from the poet's first eight books.
Mary Oliver's perceptive, brilliantly crafted poems about the natural landscape and the fundamental questions of life and death have won high praise from critics and readers alike. "Do you love this world?" she interrupts a poem about peonies to ask the reader. "Do you cherish your humble and…
I was never an outdoorsy kid. But I was a church kid. As I grew up and moved into a calling to serve the church in ordained ministry, that calling took an unexpected turn when I visited West Virginian hollers poisoned by nearby mining operations and met the people living with the consequences. Subsequent trips to Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, drought-wracked Kenyan hillsides, and to international climate negotiations in Paris all solidified for me the truth that loving my neighbor required loving God’s creation too. I’ve spent the last 10 years speaking, writing, and teaching Christians across the country the same simple truth.
I used to think that the ultimate Christian hope was in life after death. NT Wright convinced me I was wrong.
The true hope of the gospel, says Wright, is “life after life after death”. In other words, resurrected life in a renewed heaven and renewed earth. This book completely reframed what I believe about the end of God’s story for creation and held out for me a gospel way bigger than the one I had been given before.
Understanding that God has a good future in store for his entire creation and that, even now, he is reconciling all of it back to himself means that we live differently right now. This book remains my theological anchor for my climate advocacy.
In this groundbreaking book—available in paperback for the first time—renowned Bible scholar, Anglican bishop, and bestselling author N. T. Wright argues that Christians have not distorted the Bible’s message about heaven and what happens after we die.
For years, Christians have been asking, "If you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" It turns out that many believers have been giving the wrong answer. It is not heaven.
Wright outlines the present confusion about a Christian’s future hope and shows how it is deeply intertwined with how we live today. Wright asserts that Christianity’s most distinctive idea is…
"She plunged her blade into his chest, feeling it grind along his ribs..."
Outcast swordfighter, Kyer Halidan, was abandoned in a cornfield at age three. Now, twenty years on, she’s searching for answers: Who left her there? And why?
Kyer doesn’t suffer fools, and when she kills a man in…
I have been to hell and back over the years. After experiencing childhood abuse, I lived through a succession of traumas with my family including fraud, painful experiences in church ministry, a death threat, and a catastrophic house fire accidentally started by my mother-in-law. While I was helped by counseling, prayer, and caring friends and mentors, something was still missing. I needed to process all that pain and loss but didn’t know how. I had to learn how to grieve. Over years of rebuilding, I’ve lived the lessons of lament and know the healing that is possible when pain is metabolized.
I love that Rah calls lament prophetic because it shines a light on the hard realities of pain or injustice. I needed to hear lament described as a conversation that happens best in communities hoping to be heard and helped by the Divine.
Rah is a professor and pastor, allowing him to bring intellectual rigor and empathy to his work. The book was born of a teaching series whose goal was to make room for stories of struggle instead of focusing, as American evangelicals typically do, on success and positivity.
This book traces through the songs of lament that make up the Book of Lamentations and honors the fact that sometimes laments end in minor key since they refuse to bury, bypass, or force a happy ending.
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Englewood Review of Books Best Books When Soong-Chan Rah planted an urban church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his first full sermon series was a six-week exposition of the book of Lamentations. Preaching on an obscure, depressing Old Testament book was probably not the most seeker-sensitive way to launch a church. But it shaped their community with a radically countercultural perspective. The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it…
I’ve always been a thinker, asking big questions and playing around with crazy ideas. That’s why I’ve been fascinated by the Bible since I was fourteen, reading it cover-to-cover multiple times and studying it academically for—approaching four decades now. It’s a classic for a reason! At first, I read it because I became a Christian, and it’s part of the package, but within a short time, I was hooked. I was especially interested in the tough parts, the bits I didn’t like or couldn’t make sense of. They were invitations to explore, think, and learn. It never ceases to surprise me with new ideas and inspirational insights.
I like hugging trees, so this is my kind of book! It’s based on a PhD, but I found it very readable and blew me away! Its basic idea is that the OT sees the whole cosmos—including animals, plants, mountains, stars, rivers, and land—as alive and as “persons” in some sense.
The Bible is brimming with such language, but we always dismiss it as “mere” poetry. Nope, says Joerstad, ancient Israelites were animists. What the flump! That conclusion turns much of the OT scholarship upside down. I was so intrigued with this one that I read it three times.
It's such a novel interpretation, but to my mind, it makes sense! I am still not sure how it should affect the way we see the cosmos today, but the mystic within me likes it.
The environmental crisis has prompted religious leaders and lay people to look to their traditions for resources to respond to environmental degradation. In this book, Mari Joerstad contributes to this effort by examining an ignored feature of the Hebrew Bible: its attribution of activity and affect to trees, fields, soil, and mountains. The Bible presents a social cosmos, in which humans are one kind of person among many. Using a combination of the tools of biblical studies and anthropological writings on animism, Joerstad traces the activity of non-animal nature through the canon. She shows how biblical writers go beyond sustainable…
I began as a Benedictine Oblate and then joined a monastery. I was drawn to women presiding at our own liturgy of the hours, a spirituality that seeks the Divine in music, art, and literature, alongside a passion for justice. Yet, I questioned history and began a pursuit of “what really happened.”
I’ve kept up with the growing literature on the Rule of Benedict, Benedictine history, and Benedictine Spirituality. I'm currently researching (a many-year project) the history of Benedictine women from the time of Benedict and Scholastica up to around 1850. The few histories out there are all about the men (who can be quite colorful characters), but very little on Benedictine Women.
I love this because Torvend gently but firmly tells us the truth.
St Benedict lived through a time of environmental devastation at the hands of the Imperial class, and rejected the way Christianity was being co-opted by the Roman Empire, where servant leaders were now princely lords.
Given our current situation on fragile Mother Earth, Torvend paints one of the most original takes on St. Benedict and his relationship with creation. Torvend invites us to listen to the Christ of creation.
Torvend is poignant when he points out that a distortion of Christianity is at the root of our current ecological crisis—something St Benedict knew well.
Can early medieval monasteries serve as a model of sustainable development and environmental conservation in today's world? Inspired by Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si and Benedictine communities around the world whose shared monastic values inform ecological practice, Monastic Ecological Wisdom uncovers the hidden story of early Christian and monastic care for the earth.
In Monastic Ecological Wisdom, Samuel Torvend shows how it is possible that medieval monastic values and practices could assist in the careful conservation of what we claim is God's first gift, God's first gesture of grace: the earth and all that dwells with it. By reflecting…
A mysterious stranger traps teen siblings in a precarious game where each must overcome their embittered past for the other to survive.
This suspenseful, yet winsome novel explores the power of family and forgiveness. But take heed. The truth can cut like shards of glass, especially for those who’d rather…
As the author of 100+ children’s books, I work mainly on assignment for educational and faith-based publishers. But when I’m freelancing, I want the topic to be something I’m passionate about. Being married to a science teacher, we often discuss science issues. After having grandchildren, I wondered, what type of planet are we going to leave them? Our grandchildren are aware and concerned about severe weather patterns. I asked myself, what can I do? Plus, I wanted to write through the lens of my faith. I wrote my picture book, God’s Earth is Something to Fight For, to instill hope and give practical ways for children to help save Earth.
So much more than a nonfiction book, Betsy Painter’s All of Creation informs and includes a Biblical perspective and Scripture related to each of the eleven chapters.
Each chapter includes how kids can make a difference and related activities with topics ranging from endangered species to coral reefs to the poles and global climate. The lyrical language emphasizes kindness and care for our planet. For example, the first chapter features water in language kids can understand.
“Imagine waking up during a thunderstorm, as the rain sprays against your window like God is aiming His garden hose at your house.” The chapter defines fresh water, explains clean water challenges, and gives concrete examples that widen a child’s scope related the world and its limitations.
Nearly 200 pages, this book empowers kids ages 8 – 12 to know more and to do more. The subtitle summarizes the book well: Understanding God’s Planet…
From conservation to protecting endangered species to sustainable living, All of Creation offers young readers accessible and fascinating information on the challenges our planet faces and practical ways we can care for the magnificent world around us.
Drawing on science and Scripture, this hope-filled and kid-friendly guide to planet Earth addresses our most pressing questions about caring for and respecting God's world, such as:
What are the biggest challenges our planet faces, and what impact do they have on our lives? What guidance does the Bible offer to help us navigate environmental issues such as pollution, food shortages, and deforestation?…
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.
I found this academic anthology helpful for grounding me in some of the more conceptual issues regarding how we think about Earth. How does it affect us, for example, to think about Earth as Mother or as a resource provided primarily for humans?
I appreciated the diversity of more philosophical explorations alongside some history of how different religious groups understand the environment. The chapter on American Evangelicalism was especially interesting. This wasn’t a short or easy read, but it was important for helping me focus on how we think about our planet and why that matters.
This book charts a new direction in humanities scholarship through serious engagement with the geopolitical concept of the Anthropocene. Drawing on religious stwhatudies, theology, social science, history and philosophy, and can be broadly termed the environmental humanities, this collection represents a groundbreaking critical analysis of diverse narratives on the Anthropocene. The contributors to this volume recognize that the Anthropocene began as a geological concept, the age of the humans, but that its implications are much wider than this. Will the Anthropocene have good or bad ethical outcomes? Does the Anthropocene idea challenge the possibility of a sacred Nature, which shores…
When writing about the everyday challenges that women face within the workplace, I aim to express the events that occur before, during, and after the experience. Unpopular belief, life doesn’t go back to normal for most of us, as getting back to normal from any traumatic experience will leave you shielded. I found my voice through writing about my passion for enabling female empowerment. My path as a woman in leadership came from understanding the lack of consistent supportive resources, encouragement, and validation, amongst women in the workplace. Through my writing, I aim to creatively empower and encourage my readers to find their voice.
Valerie Burtons gives great guidance enabling and encouraging change through the simplest form of your thoughts. Understanding how you think can lead to your success, she outlines the discovery that encourages and enable empowerment within ourselves. Her holistic approach through positive thinking and transparent coaching enable the cultivation of positive perspectives for all of life’s lessons.
Popular author and professional certified coach Valorie Burton knows that successful women think differently. They make decisions differently. They set goals differently and bounce back from failure differently. Valorie is dedicated to help women create new thought processes that empower them to succeed in their relationships, finances, work, health, and spiritual life. With new, godly habits, women will discover how to:
focus on solutions, not problems choose courage over fear nurture intentional relationships take consistent action in the direction of their dreams build the muscle of self-control
In this powerful and practical guide, Valorie provides a woman with insight into…
In Renaissance Venice, the deadliest weapon isn’t a blade… it’s a secret.
Angelo Mascari is a master swordsman whose greatest battle isn’t fought for crown or country, but for love. When treachery strikes and the Republic turns against him, Angelo is forced into a desperate flight that leads him across…
I am a licensed therapist who has been in the mental health field for over 15 years. I believe that God wants his followers to be mentally healthy! We are better witnesses to Him when we think and act in ways that reflect biblical principles. This is why I am a big fan of books that help me think and act more wisely and that also helps me follow God more deeply. Working through our mental ‘stuff’ and following God well are greatly intertwined. Whether in person or by recommending books, I love to be a part of that process with people.
This is one of my most highly recommended books for those struggling with baggage from the past, such as rejection, resentment, and perfectionism.
Wright takes readers through a process of going back to work through past baggage, forgive past hurts, and then change future responses. For Christians committed to moving (and living) beyond their past, this book can help them do just that. Wright is a leading expert in grief, loss, and trauma and has a number of other invaluable books.
Much of who we are, what we do, and how we feel is determined by our past. Whether they're relationships from our childhood or pressures from recent years, the events of the past can have a significant impact on our current behavior.
A continual bestseller now re-launched with a new look for new readers, this insightful and perceptive book shows readers how to face and move beyond the negative events and feelings of their past. Writing from a compassionate, Christian perspective, H. Norman Wright helps readers understand who they are, who is responsible for their character, and how they can…
