It seems to happen much too quickly. Temperatures drop, people in parkas trudge through city sidewalks, and the sun shows itself less and less. The seasons are changing and the holidays are coming.
With the cold and the dark also brings the coziness and comfort of home and hibernation, and holidays. So set that “out of office” alert, trade your dress shoes for fuzzy slippers and get your tea kettle on the stove because we’ve put together a list of books you’ll want to delve into this holiday season.
1. Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert
In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a super coral that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.
2. The Nature of Nature – Why We Need The Wild by Enric Sala
In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.
3. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. InBraiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise”
4. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard
A world-leading expert shares her amazing story of discovering the communication that exists between trees, and shares her own story of family and grief.
A New York Times Best Seller, winner of the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Prize in Mountain Environment and Natural History and winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature.
5. A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by Sir David Attenborough
A fantastic sentiment by broadcaster and natural historian, David Attenborough. Voted Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Science & Technology Book of the Year.