Looking for a great book to read? Check out these suggestions by fellow alums. Authors with a Yale affiliation are denoted by “*” after their name. Email us with suggestions for books to add. We are aiming to build a robust and diverse list of topics and authors. Happy reading!
- Animals
- Behavioral Change
- Cities
- Classics
- Climate Change
- Design & Technology
- Ecology
- Energy
- Environmental Justice
- Food & Agriculture
- Forests
- History
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Industrial Ecology
- International
- Memoirs
- Philosophy of Nature & Spirituality
- Science and Conservation
- Sustainability
- Water
- Wealth & Inequality
- YaleNews Books in Brief Archive
Animals
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
The Ninemile Wolbes by Rick Bass
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb*
Wild City: A Brief History of New York City in 40 Animals by Thomas Hynes
Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man by Jason Mark
Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot
Behavioral Change
Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things by Elizabeth R. Desombre
Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have by Tatiana Schlossberg
Cities
Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City by Eric Sanderson
Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies by Ginger Strand
Classics
Desert Solitaire and The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture by Wendell Berry
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold*
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher
Walden, The Maine Woods, and Walking by Henry David Thoreau
Climate Change
A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest by William DeBuys
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert*
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos by David Pogue*
Design & Technology
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by Bill McDonough*
Ecology
The New Ecology: Rethinking a Science for the Anthropocene by Oswald J. Schmitz*
Energy
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air by David MacKay
Environmental Justice
Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States by Carl A. Zimring
Food & Agriculture
Bring It to the Table: On Farming and Food by Wendell Berry
Eating Animals by Jonathan Fafran Foer
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Feasting Wild by Gina Rae La Cerva
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Young Readers Edition by Michael Pollan
Forests
The Trees in My Forest by Bernd Heinrich
The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation by Fred Pearce
History
Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England and Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon*
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash
After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene by Jedidiah Purdy*
The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions by David Quammen*
The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
Indigenous Knowledge
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Industrial Ecology
Journal of Industrial Ecology Bookshelf
International
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi
Memoirs
The Turquoise Ledge Leslie Marmon Silko
Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
Philosophy of Nature & Spirituality
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things by Jane Bennett
Journey of the Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker*
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert*
Listening at Lookout Creek – Nature in Spiritual Practice by Gretel Van Wieren*
Science & Conservation
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
Sustainability
Values at Work: Sustainable Investing and ESG Reporting edited Daniel Esty and Todd Cort*
A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future edited by Daniel Esty*
Water
Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin
Unquenchable by Robert Glennon
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition by Marc Reisner
Wealth & Inequality
Billionaire Wilderness by Justin Farrell*
Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World edited by John Freeman
Yale New Books In Brief
YaleNews features works recently or soon to be published by members of the University community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers.