The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science and Poetry By Maria Popova Illustrations by Ofra Amit Storey Publishing, 2024 If books are medicine, The Universe in Verse by Maria Popova is a cure-all. In a scant 100 pages, it demands nothing but your loving attention, and in return, it feeds your battered …
In Charlotte McConaghy’s lovely new novel, Wild Dark Shore, Dominic Salt and his family—eighteen-year-old Raff, seventeen-year-old Fen, and nine-year-old Orly—moved to Shearwater Island eight years earlier, when Dominic “needed a job, and I needed it to be far away.” While formerly living among researchers, the rising seas have forced the scientists to evacuate, and the …
Nearly 30 years ago, the first genetically modified (GM) seed produced a tomato known as the Flavr Savr. The tomato was engineered for longer shelf life which was where it spent most of its time. Consumers didn’t like the way it tasted and it soon went the way of history. But that didn’t stop Monsanto …
By Kate J. Neville Texas Tech University Press, 2024, The Sowell Emerging Writers Prize Winner I read Going to Seed right before the U.S election, when I was full of hope for the future of the earth, frantically writing postcards and going to purple states to canvass door-to-door, ready to usher in a woman president. …
Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one of many POVs in the thoroughly enchanting novel North Woods by Daniel Mason. The beetle had been deposited in this wooded piece of land in …
In pollinator ecologist Stephen Buchmann’s What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees, the author makes a compelling case for why we need to pay closer attention to bees (and to protect them), offering stories and anecdotes from research and observation that highlight the fascinating lives of these extraordinary creatures.
Funny the difference a word makes. Restaurants generally don’t advertise “fungi” on their menus. But “mushrooms” and “truffles” are a different story. Even though they are the same thing. Which leads me to a book that took me out of the animal kingdom and into the fungi kingdom, a far more populous and less understood …
Here are some of the latest books to land on our desks. Please take a moment to scroll down and check them out! Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth by Margaret Klein Salamon with Molly Gage Overwhelmed by climate anxiety? Transform your angst into action to become the hero humanity …
“An ideological descendant of the Gold Rush, the green rush serves as yet another get-rich-quick fantasy founded on the erasure of Native People …aptly named the green rush, this surge in cannabis production evokes gold-rush era ideology of manifest destiny, resource extraction, and wealth accumulation.” –Dr. Kaitlin Reed (p.123) Dr. Kaitlin Reed, a Yurok woman scholar, …
New this year from Milkweed Editions is a must-read essay collection of powerful Black nature writing. Originated and edited by Erin Sharkey, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars is a stunning and needed anthology. These essays by eleven contemporary writers address the presence of Black people and their contributions not only …
The wildflowers are in bloom here in Oregon. And while I love coming across them on hikes I’m mostly clueless about what exactly each flower is. I consult the iNaturalist app (which is excellent by the way) though I find myself feeling a bit guilty afterwards; I’d like to at least make an effort to …
