Richard Oppenlander’s Comfortably Unaware is a book everyone on the planet should read. Unfortunately, the book’s biggest drawback is that it may not feel accessible to those who need to read it most. In Comfortably Unaware, Oppenlander makes the case for why the planet needs us humans to adopt a plant-based diet in order to …
Imagine. Three months in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, the place known as America’s Serengeti, lush with bison, elk, bear, coyotes, wolves and other wild beasts. This is where writer Rick Lamplugh and his wife Mary Strickroth choose to spend their winters, serving as volunteers at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch, where seminars on the flora and fauna …
Ann Pancake’s powerful novel Strange as This Weather Has Been is a must-read not only due to its compelling story but also its accomplishments as a work of eco-literature. This novel captures what a good book does best—revealing our humanity in the midst of beauty and grief and heartbreak and joy—while simultaneously opening readers’ eyes …
Oliver A. Houck’s Taking Back Eden is one of those books that can offer great hope during tough environmental times. Published by Island Press in 2011, this book’s relevance is only going to grow as we face more environmental obstacles and challenges. Taking Back Eden, which presents environmental lawsuits brought in eight countries, offers an inspiring look …
Contributors to the Indiegogo campaign received We Animals, photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur’s beautifully designed coffee table book, just before the New Year. Published by Lantern Books, it features photos of individual animals used for entertainment, fashion, food, and research. It serves to highlight the barriers humans erect between themselves and other animals to assert dominance. The …
It is difficult to separate Moby-Dick, the book, from Moby-Dick, the whale. Both are epic in scale, and both have been met with wildly different perceptions and interpretations. You only need to browse Amazon reviews to get a taste. I’ve now read this book twice, and I can’t say that the second time around was any …
Happy new year, readers and writers! We are looking forward to a new year of eco-literature and already have a great lineup of new reviews coming soon. For all of you who live in the Seattle area or who are attending AWP, we’d love to see you at our eco-lit panel on Saturday, March 1, at …
Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean, by Lisa-an Gershwin (The University of Chicago Press, 2013) They’re here, and we’ve not just cleared out the guest room for them, we’re opened up the front parlor, the master bedroom, rumpus room, and kitchen. Soon we’ll be barricaded in the basement with a …
The Snow Leopard (1978), a beautiful true account of a wildlife research trek into the Himalayas, reads like a novel. It’s rich with sensory detail — capturing the sights, tastes, smells, sounds and textures of the author’s journey as well as his observations and feelings along the way. “It helps to pay minute attention to …
Firstly, in March, you can take a free online course on Practical Ethics taught by Peter Singer author, ethicist and professor of bioethics at Princeton University — how fantastic! — go sign up now. Singer’s book of the same name, Practical Ethics (1979), is his second most reprinted work. Secondly, if you haven’t read Singer’s …
Wolves–will they ever cease to create controversy and incite emotion? After all, they are just another four-legged, fur-covered predator–powerful, but certainly not the “beast of waste and desolation,” that Teddy Roosevelt called them. Hopefully, the time will come when our biases become obsolete and people accept Canis lupus as the survivors they are. But we …
