Here are 100 books that Panarchy fans have personally recommended if you like
Panarchy.
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I'm an apocalyptic optimist—but I didn’t start that way. For over 25 years, I’ve studied climate action efforts and documented why governments and businesses are falling short. It’s become clear that the systemic changes we need will only come through civil society mobilizing for climate action. I’ve explored this in books, articles, and as a contributor to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. I hope my writing inspires you to embrace your own apocalyptic optimism—not as despair, but as a hopeful, urgent call to action. It’s a powerful first step toward what I believe is still possible: Saving Ourselves.
I am simultaneously inspired and repulsed by this book because it presents a terrible and wonderful fictionalized case study in apocalyptic optimism. In the novel, Robinson weaves a story of hope embedded in despair.
Having studied efforts to solve the climate crisis for over 25 years while witnessing its growing effects, the novel is pitch-perfect on the tensions we must overcome to save ourselves.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…
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…
I practised risk, resilience, and protection of infrastructure systems for 35 years. Mid-career, I became frustrated that we could deliver highly successful projects yet didn't deliver their ultimate purpose. This difference is particularly pronounced in war zones and the developing world, where most of my work has been. My research at the University challenged what I knew: it was as if someone had taken my heuristic understanding and cast the components like a pack of cards into the wind. I have shared some highlights in my journey to gather the cards. I hope you like them.
More than any other writer, Flynn explained the value and need for resilient critical infrastructure. He distinguished between foreseeable and unforeseeable threats, and made clear that we can reduce the risk and impact of both. Since 9/11, anything purporting to discuss protection/security and resilience was skewed to terrrorism, giving scant consideration to more fundamental changes in our world. Flynn brought this broader perspective to the fore, and I would like to believe he influenced political and academic thinking. I fear he was the Cassandra to the business community, who are only now starting to understand the risks they face. I made this book core reading for all the infrastructure courses I teach. It is clear, simple, and sets each concept in context with an unambiguous call to action.
Why do we remain unprepared for the next terrorist attack or natural disaster? Where are we most vulnerable? How have we allowed our government to be so negligent? Who will keep you and your family safe? Is America living on borrowed time? How can we become a more resilient nation?
Americans are in denial when it comes to facing up to how vulnerable our nation is to disaster, be it terrorist attack or act of God. We have learned little from the cataclysms of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. When it comes to catastrophe, America is living on borrowed time–and…
I practised risk, resilience, and protection of infrastructure systems for 35 years. Mid-career, I became frustrated that we could deliver highly successful projects yet didn't deliver their ultimate purpose. This difference is particularly pronounced in war zones and the developing world, where most of my work has been. My research at the University challenged what I knew: it was as if someone had taken my heuristic understanding and cast the components like a pack of cards into the wind. I have shared some highlights in my journey to gather the cards. I hope you like them.
There are some excellent books on risk like Bernstein's Against the Gods. The majority are insipid reads and over-simplistic. This little book stands out for its simple, clear, condensed overview of risk in theory and practice. It doesn't try to simplify to the point of complicating the subject; it presents the inherent complexities without drama. I made it required reading for my risk & resilience students and employees. It offers a sense of how risk changes with interpretation and how the perception can itself influence the occurrence and impact. If this idea of risk perceptions and how it influences decision-making strikes a chord with you, you might wish to explore more of Baruch Fischhoff's work—it is utterly fascinating and will forever change how you buy vehicle insurance and salmon.
We find risks everywhere-from genetically modified crops, medical malpractice, and stem-cell therapy to intimacy, online predators, identity theft, inflation, and robbery. They arise from our own acts and they are imposed on us. In this Very Short Introduction, Baruch Fischhoff and John Kadvany draw on the sciences and humanities to explore and explain the many kinds of risk. Using simple conceptual frameworks from decision theory and behavioural research, they examine the science and practice of creating measures of risk, showing how scientists address risks by combining historical records, scientific theories, probability, and expert judgment.Risk: A Very Short Introduction describes what…
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 practised risk, resilience, and protection of infrastructure systems for 35 years. Mid-career, I became frustrated that we could deliver highly successful projects yet didn't deliver their ultimate purpose. This difference is particularly pronounced in war zones and the developing world, where most of my work has been. My research at the University challenged what I knew: it was as if someone had taken my heuristic understanding and cast the components like a pack of cards into the wind. I have shared some highlights in my journey to gather the cards. I hope you like them.
Judith Rodin is one of the more extraordinary influencers of resilience thought and practice. As President of the Rockefeller Foundation, she oversaw the 100 Resilient Cities initiative. The initiative may not have been as "sticky" as many hoped, but the lessons from this experience continue to inform and spur action in cities worldwide. This book gives us a sense of her thinking and vision in driving the initiative. It does not hold all the answers, and many take issue with her perspective. Nonetheless, it is a must-read for anyone thinking about protecting our cities. In an ideal world, I'd love to see Judith Rodin write the next book with Juliette Kayyem, former US Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, drawing on all that we've experienced over the last tumultuous decade.
Building resilience,the ability to bounce back more quickly and effectively,is an urgent social and economic issue. Our interconnected world is susceptible to sudden and dramatic shocks and stresses: a cyber-attack, a new strain of virus, a structural failure, a violent storm, a civil disturbance, an economic blow. Through an astonishing range of stories, Judith Rodin shows how people, organizations, businesses, communities, and cities have developed resilience in the face of otherwise catastrophic challenges: Medellin, Colombia, was once the drug and murder capital of South America. Now it's host to international conferences and an emerging vacation destination. Tulsa, Oklahoma, cracked the…
I have zero expertise in the climbing world, but I do love to hike and trek in the mountains and just generally be outside in the wilderness or on the water. I’ve hiked up Mount Washington and in New Hampshire, lots of trails in Yosemite and Oregon, and farther afield in Japan, Patagonia, and Nepal. One of the things I love most is how everything falls away when you’re hiking, for example. The calls and emails you’ve yet to return, bills you haven’t paid, issues with your husband or neighbor or a painful conversation with your mom, none of it matters. It’s just you and whatever you’re surrounded by in the moment.
This book is so hopeful. Painful, yes, and dark in many ways, but in the end, it’s hopeful. We all have a past, and to a lesser or greater extent, we all have suffered, and this book makes me feel like whatever happens, it can be overcome.
I love how this book allows you to travel the world with Franny, the protagonist, and at the same time follow her tragic past as it catches up to her. And this novel moves—not just in geography—but as you learn piece by piece about how she’s suffered and why she’s following the birds to Antarctica. It sounds kind of bizarre and yet it’s all totally believable.
'An extraordinary novel... as beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read' Emily St. John Mandel
A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive.
Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica.
As animal populations plummet, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny's life begin to unspool.
I have long been fascinated by history – and by the future. As a Boomer, born in 1949, I have surfed successive environmental, green, and sustainability waves. Since 1978, I have co-founded four businesses in the field, all of which still exist. I am now Chief Pollinator at Volans. I have served on some 80 boards and advisory boards and spoken at nearly 2000 major events worldwide. And I have authored or co-authored 20 books, including the million-selling Green Consumer Guide series from 1988. Science fiction has been a constant inspiration. The books I have picked are generally optimistic, in contrast to dystopias like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Finally, given the richness of this area of fiction, we can be sure that there are many many other green sci-fi shortlists out there waiting to be published, including ones featuring women like Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.
Earth, published in 1990, had me dog-earing many, many pages. A sense of our responsibility to the planet is shot through the book. For me this novel was very much in the spirit of a near – but warped – future that I had so enjoyed early on in books like John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. When I wrote to Brunner to say that his dystopian view of the future struck me as likely, he replied that he was disappointed, having written it as a warning, to minimize the risk of the future being driven off the rails by over-population.
Earth, overall, is more optimistic. Another novel on related themes by Brin was The Postman, made into a film starring Kevin Costner. Again, I interviewed David early in 2021 for our new Green Swans Observatory—and a key theme was his inspiration by the Judaic concept of…
It's fifty years from tomorrow, and a black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core. A team of scientists frantically searches for a way to prevent the mishap from causing harm, only to discover another black hole already feeding relentlessly at the core - one that could destroy the planet within two years.
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’m a nerd about all things museums and archives, which I teach and write about. I was trained as an anthropologist, and got really interested in using anthropology’s methods (namely ethnography) to do long-term, embedded, deep-dive fieldwork in bureaucratic settings, like big museums. I love reading books by journalists, economists, historians, and others who do ethnography and really embed themselves in different communities, places, and cultures.
This is an academic book, but it's beautifully written, and not too, too jargony. Tsing does a kind of commodity ethnography, embedding herself in multiple parts of the lifecycle of the Matsutake Mushroom trade, while depicting the worlds of pickers, restauranteurs, mushroom traders and auctioneers, nature guides, and more. She also weaves in a critique of capitalist markets in which these kinds of natural entities now are embedded, which I dig!
What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world-and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the Northern Hemisphere. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's account of these sought-after fungi offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: What manages to live in the ruins we have made? The Mushroom at the End of the World explores the unexpected corners of matsutake commerce, where we encounter Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions lead us into…
FernGully was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and it made me really think about the natural world and how humans interact with it. Now, aged 35 with kids of my own (who also love FernGully), I consider myself a climate activist for the work I do in helping everyday people to believe they can be a part of the solution to climate change. As an author, podcast host, and community builder, I've connected with other humans with fascinating passions, perspectives, and values. I want to show my audience that we can all view the world differently, but there is one important thing we need to all believe, that we matter.
When I first began to really notice climate change and the effects that were already happening, I felt like I was working through stages of grief.
Dr. Klein Salamon, a climate psychologist, explained why this was happening. Reading this book brought tears to my eyes as she described all the stages of grief in a way that made me feel seen, heard. I was not being irrational and hysterical, I was reacting in the way human beings are meant to (and do).
This book helped me process and move into action, rather than being paralyzed in fear.
Face the truth of climate change, accept your fears, and become the hero that humanity needs.
Facing the Climate Emergency gives people the tools to confront the climate emergency, face their negative emotions, and channel them into protecting humanity and the natural world.
As the climate crisis accelerates toward the collapse of civilization and the natural world, people everywhere are feeling deep pain about ecological destruction and their role in it. Yet we are often paralyzed by fear. Help is at hand.
Drawing on facts about the climate, tenets of psychological theory, information about the climate emergency movement and elements…
I have loved insects and other wildlife for all of my life. I am now a professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, UK, specializing in bee ecology. I have published more than 400 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of bumblebees and other insects, plus seven books, including the Sunday Times bestsellers A Sting in the Tale (2013), The Garden Jungle (2019), and Silent Earth (2021). They’ve been translated into 20 languages and sold over half a million copies. I also founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, a charity that has grown to 12,000 members.
EO Wilson died just a few weeks ago, at the age of 92. It was a sad day for me, as he has always been one of my great heroes. “E.O.” was a fantastic scientist, a world authority on ants, and sometimes known as the “father of biodiversity”. In this book, he argues that we have no right to drive millions of species extinct and that our own future depends upon setting aside half the Earth for nature.
History is not a prerogative of the human species, Edward O. Wilson declares in Half-Earth. Demonstrating that we blindly ignore the histories of millions of other species, Wilson warns us that a point of no return is imminent. Refusing to believe that our extinction is predetermined, Wilson has written Half-Earth as a cri de coeur, proposing that the only solution to our impending "Sixth Extinction" is to increase the area of natural reserves to half the surface of the earth. Half-Earth is a resounding conclusion to the best-selling trilogy begun by the "splendid" (Financial Times) The Social Conquest of Earth…
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 grew up in Uganda and Kenya, and when I moved to the United States, I felt separated from myself. Learning how to be American was exhausting and so I disappeared into books. I’m now more settled, but I still travel through fiction. These days, I am reading fiction by African women. You should be, too! There is so much stunning literature out there. These five books are just the beginning, but they are novels I can’t stop thinking about.
What does environmental racism look like? ReadHow Beautiful We Wereby Imobolo Mbue for a vital, searing answer. An American oil company is destroying the land and water of the fictional village of Kosawa. Children are dying. The company does this because they can, spouting only empty words about restitution. The novel narrates the village’s fight back, using alternating points of view to electric, pulsing effect.
'Sweeping and quietly devastating' New York Times 'A David and Goliath story for our times' O, the Oprah Magazine
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, this is the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations are made - and broken. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But it will come at a steep price - one which generation after generation…
