6 Books on Fighting Climate Change
Though climate change is a real concern, some choose to ignore the evidence and scientific consensus. But these six books featured in our Summer 2016 issue show that it is a very clear and present danger. Engaging and comprehensible, these books show how we can all take steps to help.
Eco Living Japan
Sustainable Ideas for Living Green
Deanna McDonald
Tuttle Publishing
Hardcover $29.95 (240pp)
978-4-80531283-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Accessible and beautiful, Eco Living Japan presents concepts of Japanese house design specialized for modern ecological sensibilities. With emphases on the history of Japanese construction and modern building simplicity, this book is likely to appeal to design students, and homebuilders and homebuyers concerned with environmentally mindful design.
The book benefits from excellent layout and organization, and its many large, high-resolution photos make it a joy to flip through. The efficiency of the text is a good complement to the book’s secondary thesis of simplicity in design and lifestyle, and numerous cross-sections help to illuminate building designs described in-line. Background in architecture is not necessary for comprehension of this book. In fact, with its easy language and focus on everyday elements, it seems to have been written with the everyman, rather than the scholar, in mind.
The houses presented here do not include active sustainability measures, like gray water recovery, solar power, and rooftop gardens, favoring instead passive tactics like material efficiency and self-cooling spaces. The book tends to focus on aesthetics, which may broaden perspectives on how a space can be green. Ultimately, it will draw many fans from design and householding communities worldwide. While not every design is necessarily feasible for the average homebuilder, the book’s ideas on space usage could function as a source of inspiration for builders hoping to satisfy a green market without resorting to expensive or elaborate tactics.
Eco Living Japan is a timely publication that might pair well with both the work of Marie Kondo and literature on tiny houses. Expect it to fuel the growing fandom of home simplicity and efficiency, as well as interest in Japanese traditional design.
ANNA CALL (May 27, 2016)
Glorious Times
Adventures of the Craighead Naturalists
Tom Benjey
University of Montana Press
Softcover $16.95 (370pp)
978-0-9909748-7-1
In this genealogy of the Craighead family, the author explores the history and exploits of this famously nature-oriented clan.
The tale of the Craigheads begins with the dawn of the American colonies, but the book itself begins with the engaging tale of two Craighead brothers capturing and training hawks in Depression-era Pennsylvania. This story-oriented style typifies Glorious Times, which recounts the lives of the historical Craigheads in lively detail, bringing readers into close, personal proximity to the subjects’ lives. Roughly chronologically, the book describes each significant Craighead chapter by chapter, always highlighting their nature-loving and environmental points. Since the family’s story begins so early in American history, the book spends several chapters working through older relatives, who predated what modern activists would recognize as environmentalism, before getting to the generations that produced the more famous conservationists and natural scientists. However, the theme of the Craigheads as nature-lovers, hikers, campers, and outdoorspeople remains a powerful thread throughout the book. The author’s research on the topic could not be more meticulous, incorporating typical genealogical sources, such as newspapers, as well as personal interviews with Jean Craighead George and family documents, such as diaries.
Particularly valuable to book people may be the insight that Glorious Times provides into the mind and personality of Jean Craighead George, who is presented as at once more liberal and ambitious than other Craighead women and fully in step with her family’s environmentalist tradition. Fans and critics of her work and of the roots of the twentieth century environmental stewardship movement will find this work a fascinating insight. Genealogists may also be interested in the book as an example of a family history well executed.
ANNA CALL (May 27, 2016)
Superstorm Sandy
The Inevitable Destruction and Reconstruction of the Jersey Shore
Diane C. Bates
Rutgers University Press
Softcover $27.95 (192pp)
978-0-8135-7339-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In a concise but meaningful way, Superstorm Sandy summarizes the state of New Jersey’s response to 2012’s devastating Hurricane Sandy. To do this, the book examines the state from historical, political, and several socio-economic perspectives to determine how its circumstances impacted its response.
The book references climate change in its conclusion, but primarily focuses on the sociological fallout of Superstorm Sandy along the New Jersey shore. It also references the recent rise of tandem environmental and sociological areas of study. Analysis of storm resiliency between different classes features prominently throughout the book, especially highlighting the historic tension between New Jersey’s blue collar year-round residents, who produced the likes of Bruce Springsteen, and the wealthier tourists from out-of-state who make the resorts, vacation homes, and boardwalks such a success. In examining the roots of New Jersey’s storm response, Bates tracks historical data sets, including ethnic migrations and the rise of casinos, to provide a framework for the community-level response to Sandy. The result is a comprehensive view of the entire state from its foundation to the modern day. While the book is useful as an examination of the roots of the federal, state, and local reaction to Sandy, it could almost stand alone as a quick socioeconomic history of the entire state of New Jersey.
Though aimed at an academic audience, Superstorm Sandy is highly readable and has the potential for broad appeal. The final chapter, where the author discusses her family’s experience with the storm, is especially useful in that it places the previous, more cerebral chapters into immediate context. Highly recommended for policymakers, local governments, and active citizens working in any disaster-prone coastal area.
ANNA CALL (May 27, 2016)
A Sugar Creek Chronicle
Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland
**Cornelia F. Mutel **
University of Iowa Press
Softcover $16.00 (240pp)
978-1-60938-395-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Gentle, lyrical and personal, this firsthand account of climate change will sway skeptics and inspire believers to activism.
Cornelia Mutel, an Iowan ecologist, uses A Sugar Creek Chronicle to detail the subtle and grand changes happening both in her own backyard and worldwide. Yet the book is also intimate, describing scenes from the author’s own family life and loving descriptions of the biodiversity of her Midwestern landscape. The development of her life, including its tragedies, serves both as a reminder of what humanity stands to lose and, in the case of her cancer, an analogy for the sickening of the environment itself. Day by day, she records the changes in her environment, memories of her and her mother’s battles with cancer, and many details of natural life. The book is framed within the hope that Mutel’s granddaughter will eventually read it, and the sense that it is a personal narrative is strong.
The prose is fluid, a pleasure to read, and often uses artful prose to emphasize the tragedy of climate change. When research and hard data do enter the narrative, they do so within the book’s flow, never challenging the sense that the author is writing a diary rather than a polemic, pouring out her heart rather than bashing the reader over the head with statistics. This refreshing approach is bound to soften holdouts against the concept of climate change and will inspire believers who place environmental activism low on their list of priorities.
Consider A Sugar Creek Chronicle a must-read for environmentalists and a strong recommendation for everyone else. This unique and beautiful book also deserves to be on college reading lists nationwide.
ANNA CALL (May 27, 2016)
Tools for Grassroots Activists
Best Practices for Success in the Environmental Movement
Nora Gallagher, editor
Lisa Myers, editor
Patagonia
Softcover $24.95 (288pp)
978-1-938340-44-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
This concentration of excellent advice is worth several close reads, not only for environmental activists, but for any nonprofit grassroots movement.
Featuring names as big as 350.org and Jane Goodall, this collection of environmental and grassroots wisdom is distilled from the Patagonia clothing company’s biennial Tools Conference. Topics are both practical and ground-level, including strategic planning, lobbying, and the historical successes of community activist movements. Essays by experts in the field dominate the book, interspersed by large photographs and case studies of successful environmental movements.
Activists will find Patagonia Tools a useful resource, considering not only its sound, efficiently delivered advice, but also the resources listed at the end of each chapter, the effective index, and the orderly chapter organization. It functions most effectively as a sourcebook, next as a reference, and readers will no doubt want to take notes as they peruse. The book is generally optimistic about the ability of activists to make a change, but it remains practical throughout. Its ideal readers are already aware of the problems they want to solve and passionate about their cause, but untutored in the realities of social change. The balance of serious, somewhat dense didactic essays with vivid photographs and glowing examples of triumphs, like the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, will help to maintain the spirits of activists who find themselves disappointed that changing the world can be such a slog.
Any grassroots movement, whether it is new or seasoned, could benefit from the use of this book. It is the next logical destination after a brainstorming session and the blueprint for a successful activist campaign. Consider it required reading for anyone committed to making a difference.
ANNA CALL (May 27, 2016)
Climate Change for Beginners
Dean Goodwin
Joe Lee, illustrator
For Beginners
Softcover $15.95 (144pp)
978-1-939994-43-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Offering a quick, comprehensive overview of the causes, effects, and controversy around global, human-generated climate change, this quick read is an ideal recommendation for young teens. Without dumbing down the relevant science and legal complications, it presents the problems of global warming and pollution in simple, straightforward terms. The comprehensive list of further reading materials located at the back of the book is also ideal for school projects and student research.
Though billed as a comic book, Climate Change for Beginners is primarily a text-based work enhanced with intermittent, informal black and white line drawings. At best, the illustrations provide a break in the text and punctuate its main points. Nevertheless, they endow the book with a charming approachability that may appeal to young and reluctant readers. Adults and research-focused students may be frustrated, however, by the grayscale in-page reproductions of graphs and charts that occasionally appear to illustrate the book’s point. The similarity of the gray shades sometimes makes chart comprehension difficult.
The book’s engaging and easy-to-read style makes what would usually qualify as dense subject matter clear and comprehensible. Positive mentions of students will make youngsters feel as though the book is conscious of them and their interest in the subject. Educators and community groups working with young people should consider it an invaluable resource both for introducing young people to climate change and for further informing teens who already know the general facts.
ANNA CALL (May 27, 2016)
Anna Call
