The best environmental books we’ve read in 2025
We published 28 book reviews this year and promoted many more. Out of all the books we’ve read, here are some of our favorites. We hope you enjoy them — and we thank …
Book Reviews
New and forthcoming environmental books (December 2025)
As we approach the end of the year I’m pleased to share another impressive selection of newly published (or soon-to-be-published) environmental books. Enjoy! Cowbells on the Kill Floor: Veganism, Legacy …
Wild Fictions; Essays on Literature, Empire, and the Environment by Amitav Ghosh
The University of Chicago Press, 2025 Among writers of climate and environmental fiction, Amitav Ghosh is known for his 2016 non-fiction book The Great Derangement, where he argues that fiction …
Lost Animals: Voices of Extinction
What would the last living passenger pigeon (seen in silhouette above) have to say if he or she were alive today? Or the Tasmanian tiger? Or the Carolina parakeet? In …
Bloom Again, A Novel by Marybeth Holleman
University of Alaska Press, 2025 Edward O. Wilson, a pioneer of evolutionary biology, once wrote, “Humanities will have to blend with the sciences, because technology is going to demand the …
Book Review: The Tortoise’s Tale by Kendra Coulter
Years ago, when I was in the Galápagos Islands, a fellow traveler asked how long tortoises live. Our guide’s answer was: “We don’t know.” No human has yet lived long …
Book Review: Animal History: History as If Animals Mattered
In the introduction to Animal History: History as If Animals Mattered, Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey write, “An animal does not just have a biology, but also a biography.” Sadly, …
EcoLit Books featured on Viva la Book Review
We are pleased to have an essay featured on Viva la Book Review, an organization founded to “foster thoughtful, well-crafted book criticism that supports a crucial open dialogue among reviewers, …
Book Review: North of the Sunlit River by Jessica Bryant Klagmann
In her novel North of the Sunlit River, Jessica Bryant Klagmann’s characters face grief and loss amid beautiful depictions of the natural world, from Alaska to New Mexico. Eila Jacobsen is …
Book Review: The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley
Emma Sloley’s, The Island Of Last Things, pulls no punches. It is a warning without hesitation, a tragic imagining of an end that is far too plausible, too close to …
Book Review: Defending Animals by Kendra Coulter
During the writing of Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection, Kendra Coulter’s dog, Sunny, spent many hours wrapped around her feet. Sunny, who had been abused …