I’m always looking for book recommendations – if you are here, you probably are too. Here is a running list of books broadly related to sustainability. I broke them down by type, but otherwise they are in no particular order. I only list books I’ve personally read (and believe are worth your time), so this list is heavy on non-fiction.
Food & agriculture
- Amanda Little | The fate of food: What we’ll eat in a bigger, hotter, smarter world
- Leah Penniman | Farming while black: Soul Fire Farm’s practical guide to liberation on the land
- Tom Philpott | Perilous bounty: The looming collapse of American farming and how we can prevent it
Sustainable/slow living
- David Owen | Green metropolis: Why living smaller, living closer and driving less are the keys to sustainability
- Katherine May | Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times
- James Hamblin | Clean: The new science of skin and the beauty of doing less
- Jenny Odell | How to do nothing: Resisting the attention economy
- Litt Woon Long | The way through the woods: On mushrooms and mourning
- Lindsay Miles | Less stuff: Simple zero-waste steps to a joyful and clutter-free life
Science & technology
- Hannah Ritchie | Not the end of the world
- Mike Berners-Lee | The carbon footprint of everything
- William McDonough, Michael Braungart | Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things
- Bill Gates | How to avoid a climate disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthrough we need
- Paul Hawken | Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming
- Gretchen Bakke | The grid: The fraying wires between Americans and our energy future
- Steven Aldridge, Laurel Miller | Why shrinkwrap a cucumber?:The complete guide to environmental packaging
Climate advocacy & environmental justice
- Dina Gilio-Whitaker | As long as grass grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice from colonization to standing rock
- Naomi Klein | This changes everything: Capitalism vs the climate
- Naomi Klein | The battle for paradise: Puerto Rico takes on the disaster capitalists
- Naomi Klein | On fire: The (burning) case for a Green New Deal
- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Katharine Wilkison (editors) | All we can save: Truth, courage, and solutions for the climate crisis
- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson | What if we get it right? Visions of climate futures
- Harriet A. Washington | A terrible thing to waste: Environmental racism and its assault on the American mind
- Polly Barks | More than a plastic bag: An action guide for environmentalists of every level
Nature
- Robin Wall Kimmerer | Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants
Community-building
- Mia Birdsong | How we show up: Reclaiming family, friendship, and community
- Kristen R. Ghodsee | Everyday utopia: What 2,000 years of wild experiments can teach us about the good life
- Reina Cohen | The other significant others: Reimagining life with friendship at the center
Government & public policy
- Michael Lewis | The fifth risk: Undoing democracy
- Kate Raworth | Doughnut economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist
- Leah Cardamore Stokes | Short circuiting policy: Interest groups and the battle over clean energy and climate policy in the American states
- Eitan Hersh | Politics is for power: How to move beyond political hobbyism, take action, and make real changes
- Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson | Abundance
Fiction
- Richard Powers | The Overstory
Sensible Sustainability 