Recommended books
This list contains just a few highlights but should be of use to anyone working to understand the core of our our ecolgical situation. I make occasional changes to this list to reflect my own changes of focus.
-
Books
-
By Richard Manning. Good look at aspects of the problem of agriculture.
-
Anthropologist Marvin Harris offers a sweeping yet succinct account of the ecological underpinnings of human culture from pre- to post-agriculture. Key reading for understanding the "big picture."
-
Paul Shepard on our deep connection to the Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Sometimes dense reading, but highly worthwhile insights.
-
Kurt Dahl's gripping novel of a billionaire's response to our population crisis. Exciting, disturbing, thought provoking.
-
The first collection of John Zerzan's essays. I haven't read all of these, but those I have are very good, often looking insightfully at how domestication came to be, as civilization burried our true humanity. Zerzan's writing is essential.
-
Derrick Jensen argues powerfully that civilization itself is inherently destructive and patently unsustainable. This volume makes that argument while Volume II lays out responses. Far beyond most of today's typical, semi-worthless environmental writing.
-
The first of a group of cornerstone works by Daniel Quinn. We forget that for nearly all our history we had a system that worked. In the last eyeblink of our time on Earth we abandoned it. We've been scrambling ever since to figure out how to live.
-
An anthropological collection edited by John Gowdy, this is foundational reading for understanding human life as it was (in a word, "sustainable") for all but the last eyeblink of our history.
-
Update of the seminal study of the problem of the modern growth imperative.
-
Edward Abbey's spirited novel which inspired generations of environmentalists and nudged them to consider how we can defend the earth. "God bless America. Let's save some of it."
-
Essential examination of the basis for our modern ecological challenge. Exceptional clarity of thought. The problem of overshoot is central to our dilemma. But most who haven't read this book don't understand it. Mandatory reading.
-
Just out! This is Urban Scout's book on rewilding. Thoughtful and provocative essays on humanity's greatest adventure, reclaiming what civilization has taken from us.
-
Solid overview from Paul and Anne Ehrlich, two of the pioneering voices.
-
Expands on anthropologist Jeffrey McKee's (and colleagues') important study. The current mass extinction goes grossly underreported in the media. Its fundamental connection to human population size and growth is even less often discussed.
-
A most important environmental work by Lierre Keith. Though organized as a series of counters to the usual arguments for vegetarianism, it goes to the foundation of our ecological crisis, exposing the problem of agriculture at the heart of it.
-