Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

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.

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. "As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the... (more)

An Inconvenient Truth

by Albert Gore

An Inconvenient Truth —Gore’s groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance —is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes—and a leading... (more)

The Monkey Wrench Gang (Perennial Classics)

The Monkey Wrench Gang (Perennial Classics)

by Edward Abbey

Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke has returned from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development. Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power—taking on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge... (more)

Silent Spring

Our Ravaged Environment and the Man-Made Pollution

by Rachel Carson

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . <It is> well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a... (more)

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How it Can Renew America

by Thomas L. Friedman

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Best Book of the Year A Businessweek Best Business Book of the Year A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year In this brilliant, essential book, Thomas L. Friedman speaks to America’s need for national renewal, and explains how a green revolution is the only way to secure our children’s future. Global warming, rapidly... (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)

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

by Daniel Quinn

A novel that uses a continuing conversation between a gorilla and his pupil to examine mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. A Socratic style is used through out the book. The novel deconstucts the myth that humans are the end of evolution and that human supremacy is a myth that ourcurrent culture is enacting.

Dune Chronicles: Book 1

Dune

by Frank Herbert

Often cited as the best Science Fiction novel ever written, Dune is the story of the desert planet Arrakis and the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Maud'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family--and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the... (more)

The Omnivore's Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century "What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans... (more)

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How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond

In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel , Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island... (more)

Desert Solitaire

by Edward Abbey

"A passionately felt, deeply poetic book. It has philosophy. It has humor. It has its share of nerve-tingling adventures...set down in a lean, racing prose, in a close-knit style of power and beauty." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKREVIEW Edward Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a... (more)

Zodiac

by Neal Stephenson

Attaining more than his share of enemies when his whistle-blowing practices draw attention to several environmentally careless corporations, Sangamon Taylor finds himself dodging the bullets of an unhinged genetic engineer. Reprint. K. PW.

A Walk in the Woods

Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson has made a living out of traveling and then writing about it. In The Lost Continent he re-created the road trips of his childhood; in Neither Here nor There he retraced the route he followed as a young backpacker traversing Europe. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island .... (more)

Hoot

by Carl Hiaasen

Unfortunately, Roy’s first acquaintance in Florida is Dana Matherson, a well-known bully. Then again, if Dana hadn’t been sinking his thumbs into Roy’s temples and mashing his face against the school-bus window, Roy might never have spotted the running boy. And the running boy is intriguing: he was running away from the school bus, carried no books, and–here’s the odd part–wore no shoes. Sensing a mystery, Roy... (more)

The Uglies: Book 4

Extras

by Scott Westerfeld

Fame It's a few years after rebel Tally Youngblood took down the uglies/pretties/specials regime. Without those strict roles and rules, the world is in a complete cultural renaissance. "Tech-heads" flaunt their latest gadgets, "kickers" spread gossip and trends, and "surge monkeys" are hooked on extreme plastic surgery. And it's all monitored on a bazillion different cameras. The world is like a gigantic game of... (more)

Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

by Julia Butterfly Hill

On December 18, 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill's feet touched the ground for the first time in over two years, as she descended from "Luna," a thousandyear-old redwood in Humboldt County, California. Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree high on a mountain on December 10, 1997, for what she thought would be a two- to three-week-long "tree-sit." The action was intended to stop Pacific Lumber, a division of the... (more)

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Susan Orlean

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. From Florida’s swamps to its courtrooms, the New Yorker writer follows one deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man’s possibly criminal pursuit of an endangered flower. Determined to clone the rare ghost orchid, Polyrrhiza lindenii,... (more)

A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There

A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There

by Michael Sewell, Charles W. Schwartz, Aldo Leopold

First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land. Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the book includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin... (more)

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

by William McDonough

A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism "Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. As William McDonough and Michael Braungart argue in their provocative, visionary book, however, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: environmentalism

by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel

A Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver

by Albert Gore

by Edward Abbey

Our Ravaged Environment and the Man-Made Pollution

by Rachel Carson

Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How it Can Renew America

by Thomas L. Friedman

by Alan Weisman

by Daniel Quinn

by Frank Herbert

A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond

by Edward Abbey

by Neal Stephenson

Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Bryson

by Carl Hiaasen

by Scott Westerfeld

by Julia Butterfly Hill

by Susan Orlean

by Michael Sewell, Charles W. Schwartz, Aldo Leopold

by William McDonough