Not surprisingly, we’ve been doing quite a bit of reading this year. Here are some of our favorite books. And not all of them were new in 2020. We reviewed Braiding Sweetgrass back in 2019, and it’s comforting to see that book rise to the top of our collective consciousness (a seven-year old overnight success story).
and one book i keep thinking about is dark emu, first published in australia in 2014. seeing great books find huge audiences, regardless of when they first came into the world, gives me hope to publish and this world. because great ideas and great stories have no shelf life.
You are reading: Best environmental books 2020
I hope you check out our reviewers’ favorite books of the year and have a healthy and happy holiday season.
lauren frick
top story and braided sweet grass were already on last year’s list, but if we can repeat the books, those two would be 100% the best books I’ve read this year.
Besides those two, Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Disorder, Matt Ball and Bruce Friedrich’s Animal Activist’s Handbook, and Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing are my other top favorites.
The Animal Activist’s Handbook: A perfect introduction to how to talk to people about veganism without sounding like an angry vegan. There are even guides with possible answers for all those hard-to-answer questions!
How to Do Nothing: This book is a breath of fresh air in a technology heavy, social media driven world. Utopian societies, the attention economy, and birds are just a few of the many things Odell mentions when thinking about the way in which we engage with the world around us.
dwarf raymond
If there’s one book the universe needs right now, it’s Hope Ferdowsian’s Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives. This little book on trauma and healing portrays the lives of human and non-human animals from countless parts of the world, examining the ways in which suffering and healing are universal across borders and species. Most importantly, Ferdowsian turns tangible evidence, through studies and stories, into ideas about how we can create and seize opportunities for change. Compassionate, uplifting, and inspiring, Phoenix Zones is the perfect read as we head into a new year with new hope. learn more about hope ferdowsian on her website and the phoenix zones initiative.
mindy mejía
No one sees nature like a poet, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil proves it in World of Wonders, her first prose book. This collection of essays focuses on Nezhukumatathil’s lifelong interactions and observations of the natural world. Born to a Filipino mother and a South Indian father, Nezhukumatathil grew up all over the United States due to the demands of her mother’s job as a psychiatrist, and she was immersed in landscapes from New York to Arizona. she writes from the perspective of the poet and as a person of color in a world privileged by whites. more…
jacki skole
See Also: Fiona Davis | Penguin Random House
Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams is a “gathering of stories, poems, and pleas” through which Williams explores the erosion of land, of home, of self, of decency and of democracy. And while she mines the anger and despair that often accompanies erosion, she also offers hope. As we erode, she writes, so, too, do we evolve.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver: I finally read Kingsolver’s seventh novel, published in 2013. An engaging work of climate fiction, Flight Behavior tells the stories of a young woman and a colony of butterflies that have deviated from their traditional paths.
here is a link to ecolit books flight behavior book review.
juan yunker
Dark EmuBruce Pascoe
as pascoe illustrates again and again, the first europeans to arrive in australia had preconceived notions about the people who lived there. learning the truth about indigenous australians is not just an academic exercise. learning how they coexisted with the land and animals raises important lessons for our path to a more sustainable and compassionate future.
the broken heart of americawalter johnson
this is a book i wish i had when i lived in st. louis, and I hope it becomes required reading now. because it would go a long way toward righting the wrongs in this city and, perhaps, in our country as a whole. It’s about time we decide to do better and stop recreating the past.
center for man and nature
Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must and How We Can Canvarshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti, eds. (new york: simon & schuster, 2020) a collection of the sunrise movement with writings by the center’s 2020 editorial fellow julian brave noisecat.
Thirty Times a Minute Colleen Plumb(Radius Books, 2020) Reviewed in the latest issue of our Minding Nature magazine, Thirty Times a Minute by Colleen Plumb is a book that speaks to the heart through the power of images. The volume offers readers/viewers an immersive experience with photographs of captive elephant plumb screenings around the world and essays reflecting on the lives of captive elephants by Linda Hogan, Hope Ferdowsian, Joyce Poole & peter granli, steven m. sages and others. Beautiful, provocative, unique, and thoughtful, the images and elephants in this book provide new insights with each opening. read the review here.
Raven’s Testimony: Life in Alaska by Richard K. Nelson Hank Lentfer (Mountaineer Books, 2020) A timely biography of anthropologist Richard K. nelson by one of his close friends and collaborators, chn collaborator hank lentfer.
See Also: Books about Tolkien – The Tolkien Society
when the light of the world went out, our songs arose: a norton anthology of poetry from native nations (norton, 2020)probably the most significant book to arrive in 2020, this anthology of poetry from the indigenous peoples of north america north, edited by poet laureate joy harjo, features the work of chn collaborators elise paschen and tanaya winder. The anthology weaves works from five geographic regions of the earth we call North America. each section opens with a poem from traditional oral literature and concludes with the work of contemporary and emerging poets.
democracy unleashed: how to rebuild government for the people david w. Orr, Andrew Gumbel, Bakari Kitwanga, and William S. becker, eds. (new york: the new press, 2020) a collection of social theorists, activists, and journalists addressing how to transform widespread anguish and anger into equality, empowerment, and structural change. written in the context of impending planetary change and the degradation of the earth and human communities alike.
radical wordsworth jonathan bate (new haven: yale university press, 2020) a new biography of one of nature’s greatest poets written by one of the leading practitioners of ecocriticism. Not a conventional cradle-to-grave narrative, this complex reading of complex texts finds a new lease on life for radicalism in any age.
paying the landjoe sacco (new york: metropolitan books, 2020) a graphic ethnography and appreciation of the dene people of the mackenzie river valley. represented literally, here is another example of the indigenous vision and human dignity that does not work under the urge to desecrate.
March, 3 volumes. boxed set john lewis, andrew aydin and nate powell (san diego, ca: premier productions, 2013-2016) a masterful graphic autobiography of civil rights leader and congressman john lewis in collaboration with writer andrew aydin and artist Nate Powell. whole families should read it and study its images. makes good problems.
Resource Radicals Thea Riofrancos(Duke University Press, 2020)Resource Radicals offers a hopeful vision of how the left can address the global politics of resource extraction. We recently featured some of Thea’s ideas about extractive capitalism over at the Center for Humans and Nature.
porkopolis alex blanchette (duke university press, 2020) through moving photographs and texts, blanchette examines how the meat industry destabilizes ecologies and social relationships in search of a perfectly uniform and standardized pig.
undrunked: black feminist lessons from marine mammals alexis pauline gumbs(ak press, 2020)undrunked is a poetic meditation on the experiences and resilience of marine mammals, whose aquatic culture has resisted the violence and militarized domination of marine mammals. humans. What can we learn from our marine relatives when we understand their experience through a black feminist lens?
drive your plow over the bones of the dead olga tokarczuk(penguin random house, 2020)a polish murder mystery about a lonely animal lover who investigates a series of deaths in her remote village and explores ideas about human rights. animals, crimes against nature, astrology and much more.
hollow kingdom kira jane buxton (grand central publisher, 2020) a zombie apocalypse novel told from the perspective of the surviving animals, namely a foul-mouthed tame crow and a silly, slimy dog. really a story about the separation of humans from nature.
See Also: The Best Books on Quantum Theory – Five Books Expert Recommendations