Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The key insight of Gaia Theory is that the entire Earth functions as a single living superorganism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature. But according to James Lovelock, the theory's originator, that organism is now sick. It is running a fever born of increased atmospheric greenhouse gases. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but the human race faces a ... (more)

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century

by Alex Steffen

Worldchanging is poised to be the Whole Earth Catalog for this millennium. Written by leading new thinkers who believe that the means for building a better future lie all around us, Worldchanging is packed with the information, resources, reviews, and ideas that give readers the tools they need to make a difference. Brought together by Alex Steffen, co-founder of the popular and award-winning web site... (more)

The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest

The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest

by Lynne Cherry

This inspired look at what the Kapok tree means to the creatures that live in it--and what rain forests mean to the world's ecology--was at the forefront of the ecological movement ten years ago and continues to resonate profoundly with children everywhere.

Skeleton Creek: Book 1

Skeleton Creek

by Patrick Carman

Strange things are happening in Skeleton Creek . . . and Ryan and Sarah are trying to get to the heart of it. But after an eerie accident leaves Ryan housebound and forbidden to see Sarah, their investigation takes two tracks: Ryan records everything in his journal, while Sarah uses her videocam to search things out. . .and then email the clips for Ryan to see. In a new, groundbreaking format, the story is... (more)

Unbowed

by Wangari Maathai

Hugely charismatic, humble, and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya. Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most girls were... (more)

Our Stolen Future: How We Are Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival-- A Scienti

Our Stolen Future: How We Are Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival-- A Scienti

by Theo Colborn

Identifies the various ways in which chemical pollutants in the environment are disrupting human reproductive patterns and causing such problems as birth defects, sexual abnormalities, and reproductive failure. Reprint. Tour. NYT.

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

by Tim F. Flannery

Sometime this century the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all other natural factors. Over the past decade, the world has seen the most powerful El Niño ever recorded, the most devastating hurricane in two hundred years, the hottest European summer on record, and one of the worst storm seasons ever experienced in Florida. With one out of every five living things on this planet... (more)

The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art. Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers—and to the many who revisit... (more)

Double Whammy

by Carl Hiaasen

R. J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye, is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman's scam that's anything but sportsmanlike, there's a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida-and a lot that's rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, large-mouth bass tournaments. Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for road kill; dare to kiss his ex-wife... (more)

Skin Tight

by Carl Hiaasen

Somebody wants Mick Stranahan dead. Mick is sure of this, because he just had to dispatch a pistol-packing intruder with the help of a stuffed marlin head. But who would want to hurt a former Florida state investigator? The answer is plenty of people-as Stranahan soon finds himself acquainted with a litter of nefarious players, including a hit man whose skin problems could fill a comprehensive (if bizarre) medical... (more)

Strip Tease

by Carl Hiaasen

A smart topless dancer and a cool but clueless cop join forces to trap adirty congressman, aided by one of the funniest cast of characters evercollected in a suspense novel.

Encounters with the Archdruid

by John McPhee

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a... (more)

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

by Michael Pollan

In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. Chosen by the American Horticultural Society as one of the seventy-five greatest books ever... (more)

The River Why, Twentieth-Anniversary Edition

The River Why, Twentieth-Anniversary Edition

by David James Duncan, Dick Hill

This captivating and exuberant tale is told by Gus Orviston, an irreverent young fly fisherman and one of the most appealing heroes in contemporary American fiction. Leaving behind a madcap, fishing-obsessed family, Gus decides to strike out on his own, taking refuge in a secluded cabin on a remote riverbank to pursue his own fly-fishing passion with unrelenting zeal. But instead of finding fishing bliss,... (more)

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure

by Daniel Quinn

In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn thinks the unthinkable. We all know there's no one right way to build a bicycle, no one right way to design an automobile, no one right way to make a pair of shoes, but we're convinced that there must be only one right way to live -- and the one we have is it, no matter what. Beyond Civilization makes practical sense of the vision of Daniel Quinn's best-selling novel Ishmael.... (more)

A Friend of the Earth

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Funny and touching, antic and affecting . . . while Boyle's humor is as black as ever, he demonstrates that satire can coexist with psychological realism, comedy with compassion." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times ) In the tradition of The Tortilla Curtain , T.C. Boyle blends idealism and satire in a story that addresses the universal questions of human love and the survival of the species. In the year... (more)

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

by James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency was an underground hit, going into nine printings of the hardcover edition. His shocking vision for our post-oil future caught the attention of environmentalists and business leaders and was the subject of much debate, stimulating discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels. Now in paperback, with a new afterword, The Long Emergency is set to reach an even larger... (more)

The Way We Eat

Why Our Food Choices Matter

by Peter Singer, Jim Mason

Peter Singer, the groundbreaking ethicist whom The New Yorker calls the most influential philosopher alive teams up again with Jim Mason, his coauthor on the acclaimed Animal Factories, to set their critical sights on the food we buy and eat: where it comes from, how it is produced, and whether it was raised humanely. The Ethics of What We Eat explores the impact our food choices have on humans, animals, and the... (more)

Into the Forest

by Jean Hegland

Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home. Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is... (more)

The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel

by Edward Abbey

When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey--determined to make peace with his past--and to wage one last... (more)

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Browse Subjects: environment

Top Books

Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity

by James Lovelock

by Alex Steffen

by Lynne Cherry

by Patrick Carman

by Wangari Maathai

by Theo Colborn

by Tim F. Flannery

by John Steinbeck

by Carl Hiaasen

by Carl Hiaasen

by Carl Hiaasen

by John McPhee

by Michael Pollan

by David James Duncan, Dick Hill

by Daniel Quinn

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

by James Howard Kunstler

Why Our Food Choices Matter

by Peter Singer, Jim Mason

by Jean Hegland

by Edward Abbey