Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

From the author of the international bestseller The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide is a novel of adventure and romance set in the exotic Sundarbans -- treacherous islands in the Bay of Bengal where isolated inhabitants live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers. A headstrong young American arrives in this lush landscape to study a rare species of river dolphin. She enlists the aid of a local fisherman and... (more)

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late

by Thom Hartmann

A call to consciousness combining spirituality and ecology that offers hope for the future. As the world's population explodes, cultures and species are wiped out, and we have now reached the halfway point of our supplies of oil, humans the world over are confronting difficult choices about how to create a future that works. Thom Hartmann proposes that the only lasting solution to the crises we face is to... (more)

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

by David Abram

David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of... (more)

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition

by Mark Reisner, Marc Reisner

Newly updated, this timely history of the struggle to discover and control water in the American West is a tale of rivers diverted and damned, political corruption and intrigue, billion-dollar battles over water rights, and economic and ecological disaster. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The Secret History of the American Empire

John Perkins Economic Hitman: Book 2

The Secret History of the American Empire

Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption

by John Perkins

A riveting exposé of international corruption—and what we can do about it, from the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , which spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. In his stunning memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man , John Perkins detailed his former role as an "economic hit man" in the international corporate skullduggery of a de facto American Empire. This... (more)

State of the World 2006

by The Worldwatch Institute

"The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible summaries on the global environment."--Pulitzer Prize winner, E. O. Wilson In State of the World 2006 , the Worldwatch Institute's award-winning research team provides concerned citizens and national leaders with comprehensive analysis of the global environmental problems we face, together with detailed descriptions of practical, innovative solutions, like the... (more)

Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-First Century: Resources, Consumption, and Sustainable Solutions (The World Beat Series)

Global Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-First Century: Resources, Consumption, and Sustainable Solutions (The World Beat Series)

by David E. Lorey

The most serious environmental problems of the twenty-first century have the potential to alter the course of life on this planet. Global warming, toxic waste, water and air pollution, acid rain, and shrinking energy supplies are frightening challenges that may threaten our future if we do not face up to them. Global Environmental Challenges provides important information and gives us hope about the... (more)

Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization

Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization

by Hilary F. French

A look at the profound implications of accelerating globalization for our planet's health, and a prescription for the action necessary to cope with this challenge. Our world is shrinking fast: goods, money, microbes, pollution, people, and ideas are crossing borders with growing ease. National governments are ill-suited for tackling the problems that result, from climate change, to the soaring trade in limited... (more)

The World Without Us

by Alan Weisman

A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as... (more)

Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel

Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel

by Ann Pancake

Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake’s debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been , tells the story of a coal mining family—a couple and their four children—living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their mountain life. As the mine turns the mountains to slag and wastewater, workers struggle with layoffs and children... (more)

Wolf Totem

by Rong Jiang

An epic Chinese tale in the vein of The Last Emperor , Wolf Totem depicts the dying culture of the Mongols-the ancestors of the Mongol hordes who at one time terrorized the world-and the parallel extinction of the animal they believe to be sacred: the fierce and otherworldly Mongolian wolf Published under a pen name, Wolf Totem was a phenomenon in China, breaking all sales records there and earning the... (more)

The Call of the Wild, White Fang & To Build a Fire:

The Call of the Wild, White Fang & To Build a Fire:

by Jack London

FictionU.S.A. $7.95 Canada $10.95 To this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world," E. L. Doctorow wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Generally considered to be London's greatest achievement, The Call of the Wild brought him international acclaim when it was published in 1903. His story of the dog Buck, who learns to survive in the bleak Yukon wilderness, is viewed by many as his... (more)

Shark Dialogues

by Kiana Davenport

An epic saga of seven generations of one family encompasses the tumultuous history of Hawai'i as a Hawaiian woman gathers her four granddaughters together in an erotic tale of villains and dreamers, queens and revolutionaries, lepers and healers. Reprint. PW.

My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

Veteran filmaker Ruth Ozeki's novel has been hailed as "one of the heartiest and yes, meatiest debuts in years" ( Glamour ). It tells the story of a year in the lives of two ordinary women on opposite ends of the earth, brought together by a convergence of extraordinary circumstances. Jane, a struggling filmmaker in New York, is given her big break--a chance to travel through the U.S. to produce a Japanese... (more)

Thirteen Moons: A Novel

by Charles Frazier

This magnificent novel by one of America’s finest writers is the epic of one man’s remarkable journey, set in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vanishing people and a rich way of life. At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound boy. It is during this time that he grows into a man,... (more)

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic... (more)

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

by Michael Pollan

Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness,... (more)

Prodigal Summer

by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver, a writer praised for her"extravagantly gifted narrative voice" ( New York Times Book Review ), has created with this novel a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern... (more)

The Lorax

by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel

Illus. in full color. "The big, colorful pictures and the fun images, word plays and rhymes make this an amusing exposition of the ecology crisis."-- School Library Journal.

The Holy

by Daniel Quinn

They knew us before we began to walk upright. Shamans called them guardians, mythmakers called them tricksters, pagans called them gods, churchmen called them demons, folklorists called them shape-shifters. They’ve obligingly taken any role we’ve assigned them, and, while needing nothing from us, have accepted whatever we thought was their due – love, hate, fear, worship, condemnation, neglect, oblivion. Even in... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: environmental literature

by Amitav Ghosh

by Thom Hartmann

by David Abram

by Mark Reisner, Marc Reisner

Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption

by John Perkins

by The Worldwatch Institute

by David E. Lorey

by Hilary F. French

by Alan Weisman

by Ann Pancake

by Rong Jiang

by Jack London

by Kiana Davenport

by Ruth L. Ozeki

by Charles Frazier

by Barbara Kingsolver

by Michael Pollan

by Barbara Kingsolver

by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel

by Daniel Quinn