Green Reading List

One of the best ways to teach about the environment is to incorporate environmentally-themed fiction or non-fiction books into classroom lessons and activities. Check out the list below to find a diverse list of "Green Reads" for your students.

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	Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness Edward Abbey ISBN # 978-0345326492 Edward Abbey's account of two summers spent in southeastern Utah's canyon lands tells of his stint as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, of his love for the natural beauty that surrounded him, and of his distaste for the modernizing improvements designed to increase visitation to the park.
	Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming Fred Krupp & Miriam Horn ISBN # 978-0393066906 Environmental Defense Fund president Krupp and journalist Horn proffer a business-centric prescription for alleviating climate change, coupling the market force of capitalism with technological innovation and entrepreneurial inventiveness. The authors argue in favor of strict federal carbon caps, which would induce innovators to explore new ways to control carbon dioxide emissions. The book notes the global and historical successes of cap and trade mechanisms, such as the Clean Air Act of 1990. Designed specifically to control sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain), the Clean Air Act cut emissions 30% more than the law required by providing coal plant operators with a financial incentive to modernize.This optimistic book brims with similar ideas, balancing jargon-heavy science with engaging profiles of individuals who are blending business and science in an attempt to save the planet
	The Earth Speaks Steven Van Matre ISBN # 978-0917011009 A collection of images and impressions captured by those who have listened to the earth with their hearts --- John Muir, Walt Whitman, Annie Dillard, John Burroughs, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, and more... The Earth Speaks can be read by individuals in moments of solitude, shared among friends around a trailside campfire, and used by leaders to help their learners develop a love for life and the systems of the earth that sustain it.
	Endangered Species Christopher Lampton and Karin Vergoth ISBN # 978-0531164389 Endangered Species explains what species are, how they become extinct, and the effect of extinction on the ecology, and surveys endangered species of plants and animals and possible solutions.
	The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy Joni Adamson ISBN # 978-0816522071
	Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists Jeannine Atkins ISBN # 978-1584690115 Six girls, from the 17th to the 20th century, didn't run from spiders or snakes but crouched down to take a closer look. They became pioneering naturalists, passionate scientists, and energetic writers or artists.
	Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists Paul Russell Cartright ISBN # 978-0803263345 The Lewis & Clark Expedition was a scientific accomplishment with legacies that remain with us today. This book highlights the scientific details of the journey.
	A Natural History of California Allan A. Schoenherr ISBN # 978-0520069220 In this comprehensive and abundantly illustrated book, Allan Schoenherr describes a state with a greater range of landforms, a greater variety of habitats, and more kinds of plants and animals than any area of equivalent size in all of North America. A Natural History of California will familiarize the reader with the climate, rocks, soil, plants and animals in each distinctive region of the state.
	The Norton Book of Nature Writing Robert Finch (Ed.) ISBN # 978-0393027990 This anthology contains 124 pieces by classic and contemporary nature writers.
	Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan ISBN # 978-0143038580 In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown -- what it is, in fact, that we are eating. The book is really three in one: The first section discusses industrial farming; the second, organic food, both as big business and on a relatively small farm; and the third, what it is like to hunt and gather food for oneself. And each section culminates in a meal -- a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's; roast chicken, vegetables and a salad from Whole Foods; and grilled chicken, corn and a chocolate soufflé (made with fresh eggs) from a sustainable farm; and, finally, mushrooms and pork, foraged from the wild.
	Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard ISBN # 978-0553137064 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Blue Ridge valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see astonishing incidents of "mystery, death, beauty, violence."
	Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature Linda Lear ISBN # 978-0805034271 A definitive portrait of the woman who redefined the way humans look at their place in nature.
	Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert Terry Tempest Williams ISBN # 978-0375420771 This book explores naturalist Terry Tempest Williams's lifelong love of, and commitment to, the desert. It combines her best writing on the terrain she knows so well with a collection of new essays of great originality and influence.
	Rising Tide John M. Barry ISBN # 978-0684840024 When Mother Nature rages, the physical results are never subtle. Because we cannot contain the weather, we can only react by tabulating the damage in dollar amounts, estimating the number of people left homeless, and laying the plans for rebuilding. But as John M. Barry expertly details in Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, some calamities transform much more than the landscape.
	A River Runs Through It Norman MacLean ISBN # 978-0939643417 Based on Norman Maclean's childhood experiences, A River Runs Through It contains vivid descriptions of life along Montana's Big Blackfoot River and the intersection of fly fishing with the troubling affections of the heart.
	The River Why David James Duncan ISBN # 978-0553340969 Leaving behind a madcap, fishing-obsessed family, Gus embarks on an extraordinary voyage of self-discovery along his beloved Oregon rivers. What he unexpectedly finds is man's wanton destruction of nature and a burning desire to commit himself to its preservation.
	A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold ISBN # 978-0195007770 Here we follow Leopold throughout the year, from January to December, as he walks about the rural Wisconsin landscape, watching a woodcock dance skyward in golden afternoon light, or spying a rough-legged hawk dropping like a feathered bomb on its prey.
	Silent Spring Rachel Carson ISBN # 0618249060 Written in 1962, Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' played a key role in documenting the detrimental effect of pesticides on the environment.
	Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions David Quammen ISBN # 978-0684827124 In this book, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries. We trail after him as he travels the world, tracking the subject of island biogeography, which encompasses nothing less than the study of the origin and extinction of all species.
	Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest Mark J. Plotkin ISBN # 978-0140129915 A century ago, malaria was killing Washingtonians, Londoners, Parisians. Today HIV, along with various cancers, has taken its place among worldwide epidemics. Quinine, extracted from the cinchona tree of the Amazonian rainforest, quelled malaria; alkaloids taken from trees in the West African rainforest may well yield a cure for AIDS. Yet those woods, Mark Plotkin tells us, are fast disappearing, along with the native peoples who know the powers of the plants that dwell there. His account of wandering through the Amazonian jungles focuses on local knowledge about plants, whose uses range from the mundane to the magical. The rainforests of the world, Plotkin notes, are our greatest natural resource, an intercultural pharmacy that can cure woes both known and yet unvisited.
	Through the Eyes of a Young Naturalist William A. Sipple ISBN # 978-0967302805
	Walden; Or, Life in the Woods Henry David Thoreau ISBN # 978-0486284958 Thoreau's classic account depicts the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years. A key text of the environmental movement, Walden vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his understanding of the idea that nature is made up of crucially interrelated parts.
	The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Timothy Egan ISBN # 978-0618346974 "The Worst Hard Time is an epic story of blind hope and endurance almost beyond belief; it is also, as Tim Egan has told it, a riveting tale of bumptious charlatans, conmen, and tricksters, environmental arrogance and hubris, political chicanery, and a ruinous ignorance of nature's ways. Egan has reached across the generations and brought us the people who played out the drama in this devastated land, and uses their voices to tell the story as well as it could ever be told." — Marq de Villiers, author of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
	The Yosemite John Muir ISBN # 978-0871567826 Sierra Club founder Muir, pioneering conservationist who a century ago fought to establish Yosemite National Park, wrote timelessly of his travels through this High Sierra wilderness. In a new edition of Muir's classic, Rowell ( Mountain Light ) offers a complementary vision in color photographs of the monumental region. Celebrating the purity of the landscape Muir loved, he unveils bare mountain peaks, snow- and mist-filled realms and the pristine particularity of nature on a smaller scale in green and scarlet dogwood foliage and a snug cache of primroses sprouting among massive rocks.