100 Books Like Rambunctious Garden

I loved this book because of its discussion of paleontology (which has always interested me) and the extinctions prior to this one. But I also loved Kolbert’s description of the history of paleontology itself—specifically, how the discovery of fossils triggered a crisis in our understanding of ourselves and our world.

Like some of my other selections, this book made me think about humanity’s relationship to the planet and the other life we share it with.

This book is full of surprises, taking on the thorny issue of where different species come from, where people think they belong, and what people are doing about it. Written in an entertaining way, Ken Thompson takes on those who hate and try to kill species simply because they perceive them to be in the wrong place. First, he establishes the science, pointing out that many species evolved in places that you wouldn't guess…. Camels did not evolve in western Asia or North Africa originally, but I won’t spoil the story. 

Most species evolved somewhere but today survive somewhere else.  This is obvious to someone like Thompson, whose career has been based in Sheffield in England, which was at the edge of an ice sheet a mere 20,000 years ago. Virtually all of the species that live in and around Sheffield today only colonised the area in the last 10,000… show more.

I am a biologist and I have a passion, a deep love indeed, of the natural world. I always have. It boosts me and nurtures me–body, mind and spirit. But at the moment, with everything that is happening to the world, I think it is easy to lose hope.

Feral is everything you would expect from Monbiot–elegant prose and well thought out ideas building on solid knowledge. But it is more than that. It is a book that brings hope and makes me feel that, even if Monbiot’s vision isn’t the way, there most certainly is a way through the mess we are creating.

Positivity, action, hope–these are things we need more of right now.

The earth is in an another extinction period, and humans blame ourselves.

So we have the motive (guilt) to de-extinct what were once living organisms, like the passenger pigeon, Tasmanian tigers, and dodo bird. It turns out we also have the means: selective breeding, cellular cloning, CRISPR/Fanzor for specific genetic modifications.

All we needed was opportunity, and we have that now, too, in well-funded labs that can justify spending huge amounts of money on cloning a mammoth. But wiser men than I have raised an important question. What are the risks? This is why Britt Wray’s Rise of the Necrofauna is a must read for anyone planning a future vacation to a de-extinct zoo—like me.

Published 50 years after Desert Solitaire, seventh-generation Utah resident Amy Irvine talks about her respect for Abbey’s impact on her life and writing, while also not holding back on lambasting Abbey for his behavior and hypocrisy. Irvine told Orion magazine, “My goal was not to take Abbey down, but rather to make space for other voices and relationships to the natural world.” While Abbey might be the context for the book, Irvine goes on to deliver a fascinating exploration into her own take on the wonders of wilderness. She can be as hard on herself as she is on Abbey. This book is a great contemporary look at a key question for those of us who explore the wilds: How do we keep from loving it to death? 

At times, what we most need is a deeply researched, carefully argued, and exhaustively covered history of a topic. Turner provides that essential guidebook to wilderness politics after the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964. Cutting through slogans and ideology, Turner shows pragmatic strategies, evolving practices, and the political nature of wilderness. I turn to The Promise of Wilderness whenever I want to know what happened and why it mattered. And also, because Turner sees wilderness activism as a key component to modern democracy, a lesson in engaged citizenship—and that inspires me. 

Neither Muir nor Sellars pay much attention to Indigenous communities living in or near national parks—Dispossessing the Wilderness puts the lie to the claim that Native peoples were afraid of or have vanished from these places. Spence examines the Indigenous histories of Yellowstone, Glacier, and Yosemite, and concludes that while white federal officials expended a tremendous amount of energy promoting the myth that the nation’s national parks are “uninhabited wildernesses,” Indigenous communities have continued to claim them in various ways. Compelling and wide-ranging in its analysis, this is a must-read for fans of the national park system.

Sherry Simpson’s adventures in Alaska’s wilds are less “extreme” than Jill Fredston’s, but her writing about her experiences is even more thought-provoking. I love her notion of “wayfinding”–of relying on one’s own navigational and cognitive skills to explore nature or ideas. Equally intriguing is her concept of ground truthing–walking the land or going through a process oneself to really “get it.” She contrasts the understanding that personal exploration cultivates with the information maps provide. No comparison!

These ideas raise the question: how well can we comprehend the experiences and realities of others if we haven’t ground-truthed them? Clearly, having immersed oneself in a foreign culture can foster empathy, but I want to believe that, short of that, with goodwill, one can recognize others’ humanity.

Doiron’s protagonist, Maine gamewarden Mike Bowditch, doesn’t spend much time on “mean streets” and isn’t looking to. He’s more apt to be in the woods looking for illegal hunting. But I loved that he could handle himself when he hit the streets, city, or village.

Bowditch is a hothead and makes some serious mistakes (don’t we all?). He’s an angry young man hoping to find his fugitive father before he’s arrested for murder. His childhood was more shattering than mine, which would crush most people, but Mike keeps fighting for answers and the truth.

Another profound critique of “civilized” values. Thoreau is like Plato in that he always drills down to bedrock truth: What is it that makes for a good life? Individually and collectively?

Be prepared for longueurs. Those who want a pithier critique along more contemporary lines might enjoy the works of the late Ivan Illich, especially Tools for Conviviality.