Naturally Interesting

An updated list of the best books about the environment. Obviously there are a lot more books and papers out there that didn’t make this list. Many of them are excellent, but I’m going to attempt keeping this list relatively short and limit it to less technical, popular “must reads.” Suggestions welcome!

2008:

• Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, by Jeffrey Sachs
• In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
• Climate Solutions: A Citizen’s Guide, by Peter Barnes
• Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, by Raj Patel

2007:

• Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming, by Bjørn Lomborg
• The Unnatural History of the Sea, by Roberts Callum

2006:

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
• An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore
• Field Notes from A Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert
• Garbage Land, by Elizabeth Royte

2005:

• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond
• The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, by Tim Flannery
• Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
  

2004:

• Crimes Against Nature, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

2002:

• The Future of Life, by E.O. Wilson
• Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

2001:

• The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg

2000:

• Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins

Classics:

• A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold
• Walden, by Thoreau
• Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
• Pretty much anything, by Edward Abbey
• Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner