Here are 100 books that Vigil Harbor fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a science fiction writer who loves my chosen genre for the promises it makes for the worlds that we can have—and the warnings that it offers for the worlds that might be ours if we don’t take care. I’ve picked books for people who like their thinking to be challenged, and who also long for the world to be a much better place. These are the kinds of books I love to read—and the kinds of books I try to write.
Earth has suffered devastating environmental collapse and is now a world of jungles and monsters. The last remnants of humanity are split between those clinging to the surface, and those who have removed themselves to the upper atmosphere. We follow Pearl, living in an isolated forest region, suddenly taken to the stars. A vivid and luscious reimagining of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.
"A richly imagined eco-gothic tale." - The Guardian
"Exquisitely realised." - The Times
After the ravages of the Green Winter, Earth is a place of deep jungles and monstrous animals. The last of the human race is divided into surface dwellers and the people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the Earth s atmosphere.
Bearing witness to this divided planet is Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, who lives in the isolated forests of Gobari, navigating her mad mother and the strange blue light in the sky. But Pearl…
A young woman embarks on a life-changing cross-country trip to face a family secret rooted in America's most turbulent decade. Layla James, a recent graduate and budding photographer, never knew anything about her father except that he named her for the iconic song by Eric Clapton.
I grew up when the space race was starting, and I became fascinated by all things regarding the planets, rockets, and the cosmos. For several years, I lived in the Houston area and spent hours and hours at the Johnson Space Center, where the history and future of space exploration are on display. The books on my list represent a major theme in my writing, which is futuristic in concept and asks the question: what we would do if our planet became uninhabitable. The answer provides the canvas to explore the advantages of technology, but most importantly, the determination of the human spirit.
This book grabbed me with the horrific opening scene and made me think about how this planet is moving into a climate-threatening situation.
I loved the way Robinson made me feel what it was like to live in a heat-ravaged world. I liked the main character, the head of the Ministry for the Future, because she was believable. She was smart, compassionate, and politically savvy, the kind of person you could trust in this position.
I like that the climate threat is the canvas upon which the characters need to react. For me, it is very relevant to our current situation.
“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…
As a teacher, counselor, and author, I aspire to support people’s personal and spiritual unfolding for the benefit of all life. I studied psychosynthesis with its founder, Roberto Assagioli, and explored peace psychology and eco-psychology. During my Masters of Divinity studies in the 1990’s, I began working with Joanna Macy, which led to our co-authoring Coming Back to Life and focused my professional life on the Work That Reconnects. The challenges of climate disruption, systemic racism, and economic inequity and instability require us all to act from our most mature, creative, and loving dimensions, which I believe these books can help engender.
This very readable book gave me insights into the psychological causes of climate denial (which we all suffer from to some extent) and helpful suggestions and practices for breaking through denial with courage, integrity, and resiliency. Although the book is written especially for therapists and counselors, I believe everyone will find it enlightening because we all face the catastrophic effects of climate collapse together.
Although the environmental and physical effects of climate change have long been recognised, little attention has been given to the profound negative impact on mental health. Leslie Davenport presents comprehensive theory, strategies and resources for addressing key clinical themes specific to the psychological impact of climate change.
She explores the psychological underpinnings that have contributed to the current global crisis, and offers robust therapeutic interventions for dealing with anxiety, stress, depression, trauma and other clinical mental health conditions resulting from environmental damage and disaster. She emphasizes the importance of developing resilience and shows how to utilise the many benefits of…
A young woman embarks on a life-changing cross-country trip to face a family secret rooted in America's most turbulent decade. Layla James, a recent graduate and budding photographer, never knew anything about her father except that he named her for the iconic song by Eric Clapton.
A children's DK book presented green clubs and made sustainability fun: of course, I started a club with my friends. In college, an Environmental Justice class professed methods for cooperation but focused only on devastation—so depressing that change seemed pointless; every story went: "1) horrible thing, 2) drawing attention, 3) corporations erode results." The class catalyzed my interest in changing the climate narrative. There are always triumphs to celebrate, stories of vision and excitement; that's what matters to me. It's what the DK book I loved as a child gave me, and what I hope to be able to give to others as an editor at PoeticEarthMonth.com.
For people who are into the nitty-gritty, a book of climate-related trivia collected and edited by best-selling author Seth Godin. Where this book shines is in being a springboard for further ideas—from what you can do in your own life, to how you can contact and connect with others.
For instance, did you know: a] sheep's wool can be used for insulation? b] concrete is a huge producer of greenhouse gases, but there are new methods of concrete production that are greener? c] it takes 9 gallons of water to produce 1 cup of tea, and 39 gallons to produce 1 cup of coffee? d] electric bikes were invented in the 1890s?
When it comes to the climate, we don’t need more marketing or anxiety. We need established facts and a plan for collective action.
The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a “me” problem to a “we” problem.
I am an environmental scientist with over 25 years experience working on climate change and sustainability. 20 of those years were spent working internationally on environmental policy in developing countries, advising the World Bank and the OECD, and being a climate change negotiator in the UN. I am a thought leader who advised the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and The Elders Foundation. In 2018 I co-founded my business, Change by Degrees, which works with people and organisations to transform business for good. I am passionate about fairness between people and between people and the planet and enjoy communicating in a hopeful and positive way about the future we can choose.
Mary Robinson is the former President of Ireland, an advocate for a people-centred and rights-based approach to climate action and my former boss.
In her book she tells the story of her own journey to climate justice and allows many of the people who influenced and informed her to tell their own stories.
Their experiences of the injustice of climate impacts on small islands, farmers, women, and workers make a compelling case for urgent, rights-based climate action.
_______________ 'As an advocate for the hungry and the hunted, the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world' BARACK OBAMA
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2018
Holding her first grandchild in her arms in 2003, Mary Robinson was struck by the uncertainty of the world he had been born into. Before his fiftieth birthday, he would share the planet with more than nine billion people - people battling for food, water, and shelter in an increasingly volatile climate. The faceless, shadowy menace of…
I am an environmental scientist with over 25 years experience working on climate change and sustainability. 20 of those years were spent working internationally on environmental policy in developing countries, advising the World Bank and the OECD, and being a climate change negotiator in the UN. I am a thought leader who advised the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and The Elders Foundation. In 2018 I co-founded my business, Change by Degrees, which works with people and organisations to transform business for good. I am passionate about fairness between people and between people and the planet and enjoy communicating in a hopeful and positive way about the future we can choose.
“In Cindy Forde’s environmentalist manifesto Bright New World, Earth’s perilous situation fades in comparison to vibrant, sustainable possibilities.”—ForeWord Reviews
Bright New World is a lavishly illustrated glimpse into a future not too far from our own time – a world in which today's children have grown up and tackled the world's most pressing social and environmental problems.
In a series of lush, detailed scenes, readers will enter a world of solar-powered vehicles, regenerated rainforests, skyscraper farms, insect-based snacks, recovering coral reefs, wave-powered electricity, and much more.
Bright New World's vision may be bold and optimistic, but everything in the book…
Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, where he works alongside some of the world’s leading climate scientists. He is a campaigner for the Green Party of England and Wales, a former spokesperson for the Extinction Rebellion, and co-founder of the Climate Activists Network, GreensCAN.
Latour was not one of my favourite thinkers before I read this book. I‘ve found him an interesting person to engage with, in person, and to read in the past, but I rarely found myself really agreeing with him very much. But this book has changed all of that. The title is translated from French—a better translation would beA Place to Land.
The present ecological mutation has organized the whole political landscape for the last thirty years. This could explain the deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation, and conversion of the dream of globalization into a nightmare for most people. What holds these three phenomena together is the conviction, shared by some powerful people, that the ecological threat is real and that the only way for them to survive is to abandon any pretense at sharing a common future with the rest of the world. Hence their flight offshore and their massive investment in climate change denial. The Left has been…
Drawing on my own experience as a local elected official and citizen lobbyist at all levels of government, I write books to help get citizens involved in the biggest challenges of our day. As an activist for clean energy, I wanted to write an easy-to-use guide to help ordinary citizens to become effective champions for more solar power in America. The Solar Patriot is my third book and my second on solar power. For two decades I have worked as a communications consultant and advocate for solar power, renewable energy, and climate solutions. Now, I’m writing a call to action for America off of fossil fuels as soon as possible to meet the urgent challenge of the climate crisis.
Michael Klare mines reports written by each of the U.S. armed services over the last couple of decades to show how the Pentagon identifies a variety of threats that are multiplied by climate change. Klare organizes them in a “threat ladder” ranging from most to least likely but from least to most dangerous, making it a ladder of escalation that diverts military personnel and resources from their main mission of defending the American homeland from foreign adversaries. If you're a committed pacifist, as many climate activists are, this book will be eye-opening. If you want to reduce and then stop the increase of climate change while protecting America from the worst impacts of weird weather in the coming decades, it turns out you may have more in common with generals and admirals than you'd thought.
Drawing on previously obscure reports and government documents, renowned security expert Michael Klare shows that the Pentagon now regards climate change as one of the top threats to American national security and is busy developing strategies to cope with it. Its response makes it clear that where it counts, the immense impact of climate change is not in doubt.
For the publication of our book, Climate Adaptation: Accounts of Resilience, Self-Sufficiency and Systems Change, I have worked closely with activists and academics from around the world, hearing more about the work they do and the unique and individual ways they have made adaptations within their communities. This experience has allowed me to have a deeper understanding of climate adaptation as a topic, both in a scientific and a cultural sense, thus meaning I have been more readily able to recognise the qualities of a great adaptation book!
Naomi Klein highlights the role of our economy in determining how we adapt to climate change, exploring some of the deep-rooted problems that we face. Again, this book values the importance of grassroots action when it comes to changing our society, despite governments and large corporations being the cause of the problem.
'Naomi Klein's work has always moved and guided me. She is the great chronicler of our age of climate emergency, an inspirer of generations' - Greta Thunberg
For more than twenty years Naomi Klein's books have defined our era, chronicling the exploitation of people and the planet and demanding justice. On Fire gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing from the frontline of climate breakdown, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of what we choose to do next.
Here is Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the…
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 a huge fan of this book because of how it doesn’t pull any punches and gets real about how bad the climate crisis really is.
Goodell provides a detailed description of the dangers that extreme heat poses to humans in a well written way. When you read this book, you understand how apocalyptic our future is likely to be.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times A Next Big Idea Book Club Selection The New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
Jeff Goodell's "masterful, bracing" (David Wallace-Wells) investigation exposes "through stellar reporting, artful storytelling and fascinating scientific explanations" (Naomi Klein) an explosive new understanding of heat and the impact that rising temperatures will have on our lives and on our planet. "Entertaining and thoroughly researched," (Al Gore), it will completely change the way you see the world, and despite its urgent themes, is injected…
