Book Review: The Great Derangement
With the future state of the planet in question, Amitav Ghosh explores the roles of literature and history in terms of their place in the climate crisis in his book …
Book Reviews
Book Review: Erosion, Essays of Undoing
“Trump finalizes rollback of Obama-era vehicle fuel efficiency standards” (Reuters) “Trump Loosens Methane Standards In A Win For Oil & Gas Industry” (Forbes) “Trump Slashes Size of Bears Ears and …
Bird by Word: Two reviews of American Birds: A Literary Companion
As I finished reading American Birds: A Literary Companion I realized that there were two reviews I could write: the “typical American birder” review and the “atypical vegan birder” review. …
Book Review: Land of Wondrous Cold
Gillen D’Arcy Wood’s Land of Wondrous Cold combines the stories of three lesser known (but no less important) Antarctic explorers with continental history and future implications on a rapidly warming planet Earth. In …
In Floating Coast, stories of survival, sadness and madness
The Bering Strait is probably best known these days for the 50-mile thin stretch of Pacific Ocean that separates Russia from the United States. But it is also one of …
Book Review: Deb Olin Unferth’s BARN 8
It’s rare to find a novel whose plot centers around animal rescue, and rarer still to encounter one that is deftly written and gets it (mostly) right—which is among the …
In Animal City our painful past is still painfully present
If I asked you to picture a “cow town,” you would probably picture a small town, surrounded by pasture, set far away from the big city. Yet in the 1800s, …
Eating meat in third person: The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Published in 1969, The Edible Woman is Margaret Atwood’s first novel. As a vegan, I was curious to read this book because it features a protagonist, Marian, who discovers one …
Review: Building a Better World in Your Backyard
When it comes to nonfiction environmental books these days, I feel that we’re reaching “peek dystopia.” Or, at least I hope we are. Because it seems that between books about …
Book Review: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead resists easy categorization. It is a dark comedy, murder mystery, treatise on animal rights, and tribute to English poet …
The best environmental books we’ve read in 2019
Looking back on the year, I’m happy to see that a novel that made our best books list in 2018 won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize: The Overstory by Richard Powers …