Saving the Earth

Ecology

Ecology is a buzzword that first captured our attention in the late sixties, with the development of the “ecology movement” – really a resurgence of the American environmental movement. Continue reading "Ecology" essay »

The books recommended below represent cutting-edge thinking in the field, as well as several updated classics that have stood the test of time.

Recommended Books on Ecology

The Balance of Nature: Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities 
Stuart L. Pimm

Ecologists generally conduct their research on too few species, in too small an area, over too short a period of time. Theoretical ecologist Pimm argues that "balance of nature" - stability, resilience, variability, persistence, and resistance - depends on characteristics of the species studied, the structure of the food web, and the physical features of the environment.
1992, University Of Chicago Press

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Paul Hawken

Environmentalist Paul Hawken believes that we are in the midst of a world-changing rise of activist groups, all "working toward ecological sustainability and social justice." Neither ideological nor centralized, this coalescence of activism is a spontaneous and organic response to the recognition that environmental problems are social-justice problems. Hawken compares this gathering of forces to the human immune system as people are joining together to defend life on Earth. Hopeful and inspiring.
2007, Viking

The Dream of the Earth
Thomas Berry

Berry explores human - Earth relations and seeks a new, non-anthropocentric approach to the natural world. He says that our immediate danger is not nuclear war but industrial plundering. He urges movement and education toward a "biocracy" that will heal the earth. "This volume quite possibly is one of the ten most important books of the 20th century." Dr. Donald B. Conroy
2006, Sierra Club Books

Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
Al Gore

Former Vice President Al Gore focuses on the threats that everyday choices pose to our climate, water, soil, and diversity of plant and animal life. A passionate, lifelong defender of the environment, Gore describes how human actions and decisions can endanger or safeguard the vulnerable ecosystem that sustains us.
2006, Rodale Books

Ecological Literacy: Educating our Children for a Sustainable World
Michael Stone and Zenobia Barlow, eds.

Reorienting the way human beings live on the Earth and educating children to their highest capacities have much in common, say the thinkers and educators behind this ground-breaking book. Both endeavors must be viewed and pursued in the context of systems: familial, geographic, ecological, political. Our efforts to build sustainabile communities cannot succeed unless future generations learn how to partner with natural systems to their mutual benefit.
2005, Sierra Club Books

Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems 
Michael Begon, et.al.

Continually updated, this has been the standard advanced text in ecology for 20 years. This new edition includes new chapters on applied ecology, reflecting a rigorous, scientific approach to the ecological problems now facing mankind. Interdependence between the organisms that constitute an ecosystem is demonstrated by understanding flows of energy and matter through the ecosystem. The essential reference for a thorough understanding of ecology.
2005, Wiley

Elements of Ecology
Robert L. Smith, Thomas M. Smith

This newly updated standard text maintains its engaging, reader-friendly style as it explains the basic principles of ecology. Adaptation and evolution, the physical envirornment, climate, population ecology, species interactions, community dynamics, ecosystem ecology and sustainability are some of the many topics covered in depth by this excellent text.
2005, Benjamin Cummings

Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology
Michael E. Zimmerman

This impressive and encompassing anthology of recent essays offers readers philosophical diagnoses of the current ecological crisis. It explores environmental ethics, ecofeminism and social justice, and political ecology. The book invites readers to examine their relationship with nature and to look at environmental problems from a more systemic perspective.
2004, Prentice Hall

The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples
Tim Flannery 

In a fascinating chronicle of our continent's evolution, Flannery shows that the only constant is change. The tale begins with the asteroid collision that destroyed the dinosaurs, ends with the almost equally cataclysmic arrival of humankind and fills the middle with an engaging survey of invaders from other lands, wild speciation and an ever-changing climate, all of which have kept the ecology of North America in a constant state of flux.
2002, Grove Press

The Future of Life
Edward O. Wilson

Eminent naturalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Wilson issues an impassioned call to ensure the future of life. Beginning with an imagined conversation with Thoreau at Walden Pond, Wilson combines lyrical descriptions of the natural world with dire warnings and remarkable stories of flora and fauna on the edge of extinction with hard economics. An eloquent plea for a global land ethic.
2002, Knopf

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth 
James Lovelock

In this classic work Lovelock puts forward his idea that life on earth functions as a single organism. He explores the hypothesis that the earth's living matter, air, ocean, and land surfaces forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep the earth a fit place for life. A new preface outlines the present state of scientific debate on this far-reaching and compelling hypothesis.
2000, Oxford University Press

Global Ecology in Human Perspective
Charles H. Southwick

Professor Southwick describes how humans affect global ecosystems and how these changes impact our health, behavior, economics, and politics. He gives particular attention to ecological competition and conflict, the ecology of war, agendas for survival, sustainability, and future prospects.
1966, Oxford University Press

Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Save the Earth
David Brower

As executive director of the Sierra Club through the 1950s and '60s, Brower spearheaded its landmark campaigns, essentially vaulting the ecology movement into a major international force. In this vastly entertaining volume, Brower recounts events from his life and times as prelude to his passionate and inspirational plea on behalf of the earth. "David Brower draws us to see the natural world as a nurturer, teacher, inspirer, and partner. He has been the pathbreaker . . . " Jimmy Carter
2007, Sierra Club Books

The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000
Michael Bess

In this penetrating new study history professor Bess argues that the accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in post-war France. He shows how ecological concerns have shaped France's economic and cultural life while human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment.
2003, University Of Chicago Press

Minding Nature: Philosophers of Ecology
David Macauley, ed.

Minding Nature provides a solid overview of ecological philosophy and original insights into a developing field of philosophical inquiry. Combining philosophy, ecology, and political theory this collection focuses on some of the most influential thinkers (Hobbes, Heidegger, Arendt, Marcuese, Carson and others) who have emphasized our natural relations to the Earth, our social creations, and each other.
1996, The Guilford Press

Silent Spring
Rachel Carson

Silent Spring, first released in 1962, offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still persists. Rachael Carson focused on the use of dangerous chemicals in the environment that found their way into the food supply. Carson argued that those chemicals were more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. This landmark work was a major milestone in creating public awareness of modern ecological thinking.
2002, Mariner Books

The Theory of Island Biogeography
Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson

This book is regarded by many as the most influential volume in theoretical ecology published in the latter half of the 20th century. It predicted the causes and outcomes of variations in species diversity across a wide range of habitats. Providing the underlying theory for current research in conservation biology, this work proposed the equilibrium model of species diversity.
2001, Princeton University Press

Thinking Ecologically: The Next Generation of Environmental Policy
Marian R. Chertow and Daniel C. Esty, eds.

This timely compendium offers strategies for handling the environmental problems of the next 25 years. The book gives an overview of the successes and failures of our existing fragmented and complex environmental regulations and offers new ideas for building environmental policy based on the analysis of whole systems.
1997, Yale University Press

The World According To Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth
Stuart Pimm

Calling himself "the investment banker of the global biological accounts," conservation biologist Pimm balances the raw numbers of what the earth produces against what humans take away annually, and, as an accountant might, quietly but insistently draws our attention to long-range projections. The numbers, he finds, do not quite add up. Pimm makes a strong case for ecology on a global scale.
2001, McGraw-Hill

The World Without Us
Alan Weisman

Teasing out the consequences of a simple thought experiment - what would happen if the human species were suddenly extinguished? - Weisman has written a sort of pop-science ghost story, in which the whole earth is the haunted house. New York City subways would fill with water, forests would retake the buckled streets, and land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself. After thousands of years, the earth might revert to Eden. Thought-provoking.
2007, Thomas Dunne Books