Here, at long last, is a book that intertwines fashion and fish. You might not have even known you were waiting for such a non-fiction combination, but I suggest you expand your literary diet.
It’s time for an update on all the fascinating new books we’re heard about but don’t (yet) have time to read. Hopefully one or more of these titles will pique your interest… THE ENVIRONMENTAL UNCONSCIOUS: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton By Steven Swarbrick Bringing psychoanalysis to bear on the diagnosis of ecological crisisWhy has …
While reading The Devil’s Element: Phosphorous and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan I happened to come across this article in The New York Times about a growing crisis along the Cape driven by antiquated septic systems. According to the article: More waste also means more phosphorus entering the Cape’s freshwater ponds, where …
As with so many books about the plight of animals in today’s world, Martha C. Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility needs to be read most of all by those who eat animals, visit zoos, buy puppies, and so on — in other words, those who may not realize (or who don’t wish to …
The stories in Eco-Fiction, most written in the mid-20th century, are by very well-known authors. Some are sci-fi, some are dated, and others are sadly prescient, such as Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” which makes the connection between authoritarianism and ecological disaster.
Katherine Applegate, author of the Newbery Medal-winning The One and Only Ivan and the widely hailed The One and Only Bob, has returned with the story of Odder. Like Applegate’s other works, Odder is a fictional book intended to introduce young readers to the world of wildlife conservation, interspecies friendships, and the plight of captive …
As a fan of the Rachel Carson Center I was excited to see the recent launch of the first edition of Springs, their new environmental journal: The Rachel Carson Center (RCC) is pleased to announce the launch of Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review. Our new open-access online publication features peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that …
Here’s an opportunity to be a part of a very special anthology… The call is for nonfiction or fiction writing that conveys one clear and unified message: that our oceans are worth fighting for. To help restore a culture of inspiration and reverence towards Earth’s oceans we are looking for masterfully woven stories from a range of perspectives—from marine …
Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House, inspired by a true story about dolphin research in St. Thomas in the 1960s, is a beautiful, thought-provoking read, at times as heartbreaking as it is fascinating. The novel reveals much about the vast intelligence of dolphins—and, at times, the lack thereof in humans—and offers a look at animals in …
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2022 (Published in the UK as The Sea is Not Made of Water) Life Between the Tides is my kind of book. British author, Adam Nicolson, grandson of Vita Sackville-West, sets out to write about tide pools and the intertidal zone, but those subjects turn out to be just launching …
Julian Sancton’s Madhouse at the End of the Earth tells the riveting, page-turning story of the Belgica’s multinational expedition to Antarctica, led by Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache. This may be not be among the best-known stories of Antarctic exploration, but it is certainly among the most harrowing, as well as the most haunting, with an abundance of …
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 another wonderful list of the best environmental books we’ve read this year. These may not be the books you’ll find in the top lists of …
Few people have done as much to protect whales and the waters they live in than Paul Watson. Founder of the Sea Shepherd Society, Watson has devoted a lifetime to quite literally going head-to-head with whalers in oceans around the world. Watson is also a powerful writer, with numerous books to his name over the …
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 detailed the causes of and solutions to declining fish populations, especially those overharvested in commercial fisheries. In (also award-winning) Eye of the Albatross, he lamented the …
Ann Kidd Taylor’s novel, The Shark Club, is not only a delightful read as we head into spring and summer “beach reading” time, but it is a much-needed antidote to Peter Benchley’s Jaws. Rather than instill fear in readers, The Shark Club highlights the importance of these four-hundred-million-year-old creatures to our ecosystem and debunks the myths that other books …