Top 10 Books on the Environment, 2011

Choices from Booklist - Top 10 Books on the Environment, 2011
--by Donna Seaman (Booklist, March 1, 2011)

With subjects ranging from gardens to glaciers and factories to coral reefs, the expert and eloquent authors of the best environmental books of the past 12 months insightfully explore the connection between human endeavors and the state of the living world.

American Eden: From Monticello to Central Park; What Our Gardens Tell Us about Who We Are (Wade Graham). Graham offers a fresh, ecologically astute history of American gardens grand and humble, designed by such diverse innovators as Thomas Jefferson and Martha Stewart. (Scheduled to be published on April 5)

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Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment (David Kirby). Kirby profiles people who have suffered the gravely deleterious effects of industrial animal farming in the most relatable, thorough, and irrefutable testimony yet to the hazards of factory farms. (ILL)

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Bird Cloud (Annie Proulx). Renowned novelist Proulx turns to nonfiction to chronicle the building of her dream home in Wyoming, combining construction misadventures with tales of wildlife and crimes against humanity and nature. (CQL)

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Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution (Heather Rogers). Rogers (Gone Tomorrow, 2005) exposes the “green” movement’s failure to advance sustainability and protect the environment as initiatives are hijacked by economic and political interests. (ILL)

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Growing a Garden City (Jeremy N. Smith). Smith reports on how Missoula, Montana, embraced the local food movement to create a model for healthful and environmentally sound community-supported agriculture. (ILL)

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The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879–1960 (Douglas Brinkley). Historian Brinkley continues his magnificent multivolume history of conservation in America with an original and enthralling portrait gallery of colorful environmental visionaries intent on preserving Alaska’s glorious wilderness and wildlife. (ILL)

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Running Dry: A Journey from Source to Sea Down the Colorado River (Jonathan Waterman). Waterman chronicles his simultaneously personal and investigative journey down the Colorado River, profiling diverse individuals who have worked hard to keep the river alive and flowing. (ILL)

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The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health – and a Vision for Change (Annie Leonard & Ariane Conrad). A Time magazine "Hero of the Environment," Leonard calculates the full ecological and social cost of our “stuff” and calls for an end to overconsumption and the valuing of quantities of consumer goods over quality of life. (CQL)

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The Turquoise Ledge (Leslie Marmon Silko). Silko draws on her Laguna Pueblo, Cherokee, Mexican, and European ancestry and extended family in this richly veined eco-memoir of desert life, spiritual forces, close bonds with animals, and environmental destruction. (ILL)

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The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World (Carl Safina). Acclaimed ecologist and ocean advocate Safina reports on places around the world where the impact of climate change and environmental destruction is starkly evident. (ILL)
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[All books designated as “(ILL)” are currently on order for the Copper Queen Library’s collection and are also available through Interlibrary Loan.]