Environmental History

Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic “Crisis in the Red Zone reads like a thriller. That the...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A sweeping and captivatingly told history of clothing and the stuff it is made of—an unparalleled deep-dive into how everyday garments have transformed our lives, our societies, and our planet. “We learn that, if we were a bit more curious about our...

From the bestselling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493—an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the...

“A provocative and page-turning work of true crime.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A provocative, eerily lyrical study of the heyday of American serial killers . . . A true-crime story written with compassion, fury, and scientific sense.” —Kirkus (starred review) Named a Most...

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in...

"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author."—Bill Gates An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet We have never had to feed as many people as we do...

Economic growth isn't working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Prisoners of Geography and leading geopolitics expert comes an “insightful, hopeful, and endlessly fascinating” (Daily Express) book on today’s space race—including the increasingly tense power struggle between the US, China, and Russia and...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon With a new afterword It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about...

WINNER OF THE 2020 LANE ANDERSON AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 RBC TAYLOR PRIZE From one of the world's most engaging science journalists, a groundbreaking and wonder-filled look at the hidden things that shape our lives in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways. Our naked eyes see only a thin...

The radical, paradigm-shifting international bestseller that destroys our delusions about energy consumption and will change the way we talk about climate change. We have long been taught that humanity’s relationship with energy is one of progress, with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil...

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas... IN 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen...

David Fisher pushes paper for the EPA in a world that's a lot like ours...only different. In this California - and throughout the alternate United States - all gods are real, science doesn't exist, and magic rules everything, running imp-driven computers and creating anxiety-inducing bumper-to-bumper flying-carpet rush hours. Unfortunately, unchecked magic use can leave dangerous residues, creating hours of mind-numbing deskwork for David and his fellow bureaucrats at the Environmental Perfection Agency.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography, a fascinating, “refreshing, and very useful” (The Washington Post) follow-up that uses ten maps to explain the challenges to today’s world powers and how they presage a volatile future. Tim Marshall’s global...

The internationally bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees shows how we can decipher nature's secret signs by studying the weather. The internationally bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees shows how we can decipher nature's secret signs by studying the weather. In this...

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award A landmark work of science, history and reporting on the past, present and imperiled future of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of...

What did 19th-century cities smell like? And how did odors matter in the formation of a modern environmental consciousness? Smell Detectives follows the 19th-century Americans who used their noses to make sense of the sanitary challenges caused by rapid urban and industrial growth.

From global art superstar Kent Monkman and his long-time collaborator Gisèle Gordon, a transformational work of true stories and imagined history that will remake readers’ understanding of the land called North America. For decades, the singular and provocative paintings by Cree artist Kent...