An informal survey of Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability scholars yielded suggestions for summer reading that may spark curiosity, inspire new ideas, and fuel critical thinking about life on Earth and pathways to sustainability.
Here are 25 books to consider as companions for your summer adventures. Whether you’re ready for magical realism, poetry, political analysis, nonfiction writing about science and nature, or essays on strange and beautiful creatures, there’s a title for you.
Jane Willenbring, associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences, recommends Wild Dark Shore: A Novel by Charlotte McConaghy. “A can’t-put-it-down book that would be perfect for a summer read. Mystery, family, an ode to nature, gorgeous prose – it has it all. How often do you read a love story set on an Antarctic island featuring a seed vault threatened by sea level rise?”
Steve Davis, professor of Earth system science, recommends Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. “A provocative critique of liberal governance and how it is stifling innovation and sustainability.”
Stephen Palumbi, the Jane and Marshall Steel Jr. Professor in Marine Sciences, recommends The Ocean’s Menagerie: How Earth’s Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life by Drew Harvell. “A great read about a marine biologist’s quest to understand the superpowers of ocean life.”
Jonathan Payne, the Dorell William Kirby Professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences and senior associate dean for faculty affairs, recommends Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. “It’s made up of short vignettes about the author's favorite foods, but they come together as autobiography and social commentary.”
James Holland Jones, professor of environmental social sciences, recommends The Future: A Novel by Naomi Alderman. “This novel combines Silicon Valley billionaire hijinks with prepper/doomer culture and an impending apocalypse to weave a remarkable story about a possible future for humanity. It will make you rethink the foundations of a good society.”
Madalina Vlasceanu, assistant professor of environmental social sciences, recommends The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It by Genevieve Guenther. “This book is one of the most interesting, comprehensive, and compelling depictions of the fight to address climate change.”
Elliott White Jr., assistant professor of Earth system science, recommends The Children of Katrina by Alice Fothergill and Lori Peek. “This year is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans and the Northern Gulf of Mexico. This was a significant socio-environmental avulsion event for millions, including myself. I read this book while doing my PhD focused on coastal environmental change, when I reflected on the fact that I had no clue what happened to my classmates after the storm. (The book) is a gut wrenching but necessary portrayal of how one’s starting point and resource landscape when a disaster strikes plays a fundamental role in finding a new ‘norm’ (if at all possible). It is a must-read to truly understand the magnitude of impact Hurricane Katrina had on individuals beyond the environmental and infrastructural damage it wrought.”
Rishee Jain, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, recommends Exit West: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid. “Mohsin’s use of magical realism moved me to think simultaneously about the universality of the refugee and human experience. It left me moved, yet carried a lightness to it. Plus, parts of it take place in the Bay Area.”
Ettore Biondi, assistant professor of geophysics, recommends Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky. "It made me realize how human behavior is influenced by internal (evolutionary) and external factors. Something to keep in mind as we try to organize as a species to solve the impact of climate change.”
Madalina Vlasceanu, assistant professor of environmental social sciences, recommends Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Change in the American States by Leah Cardamore Stokes. “One of the best analyses of the political landscape preventing climate action.”
Jane Willenbring, associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences, recommends California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline by Rosanna Xia. “I’d been meaning to read this for years but I was worried the science would be wrong and I’d get upset reading it. But no, it’s fantastic, with interviews with fantastic scientists! It’s thorough, compelling, and conveys a deep sense of urgency.”
James Holland Jones, professor of environmental social sciences, recommends The Deluge by Stephen Markey. “This novel is as absolutely brutal as it is long. It is the best dramatization I’ve yet read of the climate polycrisis and what cascading collapse would be like. In contrast to Kim Stanley Robinson’s magnificent Ministry for the Future, Markey focuses on the United States and is eerily prescient about the tactics of hypothetical authoritarian governments. This book is not for the faint of heart, but it has many lessons to teach.”
Rob Jackson, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor, recommends Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell. “A delightful history of endangered species and how we’ve (mis)used them. You’ll laugh and cry on the same page.”
Stephen Monismith, the Obayashi Professor in the School of Engineering and professor of oceans, recommends Down by the Bay: San Francisco’s History Between the Tides by Matthew Booker. “This is a wonderful book about the history of the Bay’s tidelands. Written as a Stanford History PhD thesis, it is an excellent blend of scientific aspects of San Francisco Bay’s tidal wetlands, especially involving sea-level variations and human habitation. It is a great example of the type of work that might facilitate connections between scholars in the humanities and the Doerr School of Sustainability.”
Richard Nevle, deputy director of the Earth Systems Program, recommends The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger. “Schlanger explores the explosion of new research on plant communication and intelligence. A fascinating, informative, and mind-expanding read.”
Jane Willenbring, associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences, also recommends The Light Eaters. “If you can be thrilled by non-fiction, then this is the book for you. I had unreasonably high expectations given all the acclaim, but it did not disappoint.”
Jef Caers, professor of Earth and planetary sciences, recommends Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. “Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, argues that we need to look beyond robustness and resilience and develop systems that can thrive under chaos and uncertainty, such as black swan events. I believe this concept is highly relevant for sustainability, climate change, and building new energy systems, and also how we organize ourselves in academia: a system shown to be too fragile under hostility and adversity. Resilience is not enough. Now more than ever, should we aim for antifragility – building our future world beyond conservation, mitigation, and restoration.”
Rodolfo Dirzo, the Bing Professor in Environmental Science and professor of biology at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, recommends Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane. “(Macfarlane), who has written about mountains, trails, and the old ways of humans on Earth, now examines a challenging question: What rights should nature have?”
James Holland Jones, professor of environmental social sciences, recommends The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How the World Lost Its Mind by Dan Davies. “Davies introduces us to the idea of an ‘accountability sink,’ lacunae in organizational systems that effectively remove responsibility for decisions, and gives us a lesson in the largely forgotten field of management cybernetics. He uses this framework to show how large organizations – and whole disciplines such as management science and economics – develop blind spots that can produce catastrophic failure. Of particular interest is the way that the narrow pursuit of shareholder value has increasingly deprived us of institutions that can create societal good.”
Jack Baker, the William Alden Campbell and Martha Campbell Professor, associate dean for faculty affairs, and professor of civil and environmental engineering, recommends Assembling California by John McPhee. “Part of a Pulitzer-Prize-winning series, this classic book weaves together geological science and human history in a vivid portrait of our state. While the science has evolved since 1993, it remains a masterfully written page-turner that helped establish the narrative nonfiction approach now common in popular science writing.”
Richard Nevle, deputy director of the Earth Systems Program, recommends The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light by Craig Childs. “Childs explores the wilds of Nevada’s Basin and Range in search of what remains of dark skies and nights full of glittering stars. As we accompany him on his journey, we learn about the costs of light pollution to environmental and human health – and what we can do to fix this entirely solvable problem.”
Rob Jackson, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor, recommends Raft by Ted Kooser. “Kooser makes the mundane sublime.”
Ettore Biondi, assistant professor of geophysics, recommends Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. “A book that every person should read to better understand how the human-decision process is biased by our perception of the risk. Something to keep in mind as we assess the risk associated with climate change.”
Rodolfo Dirzo, the Bing Professor in Environmental Science, recommends Before They Vanish: Saving Nature’s Populations – and Ourselves, co-authored by Paul R. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and himself. “We document the massive loss of populations of many species, even in cases where species are not considered endangered by anthropogenic impact. This clarification will allow us to appreciate why we are entering into a sixth mass biological extinction.”
Richard Nevle, deputy director of the Earth Systems Program, also recommends Before They Vanish.
Other recommendations
Noah Diffenbaugh, the Kara J Foundation Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow, recommends Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice by Abby Reyes.
William Barnett, the Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership and professor of environmental social sciences, recommends The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk with translation by Maureen Freely.
For more information
Barnett, Diffenbaugh, Dirzo, Jackson, Jones, and Payne are also senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Jackson is also a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. Barnett is a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business. Diffenbaugh, Dirzo, and Jackson are professors of Earth system science. Dirzo is also a professor of biology and Associate Dean for Integrative Initiatives in Environmental Justice. Palumbi is a professor of oceans and of biology. Monismith is a professor of civil and environmental engineering, which is a joint department of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the School of Engineering. The Department of Biology is in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
This story was originally published by Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Writer
Josie Garthwaite
