The best environmental books we’ve read in 2021
In 2016, we began compiling lists of the best books we read that year (new or old, it didn’t matter). And now here we are in 2021, and we’ve got …
conservation
Book Review: Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction by Michelle Nijhuis
Beloved Beasts is a richly informative history of the international conservation movement and the central figures who have played crucial roles in developing conservationism and moving conservation efforts forward. The …
Green Stories: Upcoming writing opportunities
If you’re an environmental writer and not familiar with Green Stories, now is a pretty good time to start. Because they’ve just announced three new competitions! 1)Â Orna Ross Green Stories …
Culture is Home: Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
Guest book review by Gene Helfman. MacArthur Fellow Carl Safina established himself among the legion of environmental journalists with his first book, the award-winning Song for the Blue Ocean. In Song, he …
Book Review: The Meaning of Birds by Simon Barnes
In The Meaning of Birds, Simon Barnes traces the history of birds—as well as humans’ relationships and interactions with them—over several millennia and across multiple continents. Barnes is a UK-based …
Book Review: Irreplaceable by Julian Hoffman
In Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, Julian Hoffman shows us endangered habitats and the creatures who inhabit them—as well as the humans who are fighting to save …
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 …
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: Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics
A decade ago, not long after moving to Oregon, I traveled to Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park where I entered an old-growth coast redwood forest for the first time. To …
Review: Edge of Awe: Experiences of the Malheur-Steens Country
Funny how a word can change on you. When I moved to Oregon nearly a decade ago, I first heard about the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about the Steens mountain …
Braiding Sweetgrass: Finding a way through environmental despair
At the ASLE conference earlier this summer I heard this book referenced in a number of sessions. And now, having read it, I realize why. Braiding Sweetgrass is a rich …