Book Recommendations

Great Jobs for Environmental Studies Majors - by Julie DeGalan link

Mark Hertsgaard's Picks:

1. Earth Under Fire, by Gary Braasch (University of California Press), is the best book on global warming I’ve read this year. Braasch is an intrepid and accomplished photographer who has spent years traveling to all parts of the world to document, in stunning images and well-researched accompanying text, how global warming is changing our planet NOW. Even global warming experts can learn from this book, but it’s perfect for newcomers to the topic too. Plus, it looks great on a coffee table.

2. Fight Global Warming Now, by Bill McKibben and the Step It Up Team, (Holt), is the essential handbook for the essential task now facing us: taking organized political action to achieve major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. As Bill points out in the book, many people know global warming must be fought, but they don’t know what to do or how to go about it. This book tells you, in very accessible, non-intimidating and even, dare I say, fun ways. Go get ‘em!

3. Exposed, by Mark Schapiro (Chelsea Green) is an environmental scoop that sends a message not only to American consumers but businesses: U.S. law allows all kinds of nasty toxic chemicals in the most common daily products (toys, cosmetics, etc.) that are banned in Europe; and because Europe is taking the environmental high road, it is gaining, not losing, global market share. (Disclosure: I offered a blurb to this book but, dammit, receive no royalties.)

4. The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald (Broadway Books) is the true but almost unbelievable inside story of the rampant price-fixing and other criminal conduct undertaken by Archer Daniels Midland, the agri-business giant whose name you recognize from its long-time sponsorship of The News Hour on PBS (hinting at one of the many reasons PBS offers such a corporate-friendly approach to news). Told by a New York Times reporter who clearly had amazing access to all parties involved, this book reminds us that corporate law-breaking is not as uncommon as we are usually led to believe. A great read, too.

5. A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornsby (Penguin) is well-timed for the holiday season. The opening chapter, set on New Year’s Eve, portrays four very different individuals who find themselves, to their collective surprise, atop the same London rooftop with the same purpose in mind: jumping off and ending it all. Somehow, Hornsby manages to turn this into a brilliant, insightful, hilarious but never easy or sentimental meditation on what makes all of us tick, and how to keep going despite the despair that occasionally tempts each of us.