Penguin Random House Classics has launched Green Ideas, a series of 20 short books on the environment featuring authors such as Greta Thunberg, James Lovelock and Naomi Klein.
Penguin said the books were drawn from a new canon of classics that has emerged over the past 75 years as “visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration”
Among the books included are Thunberg’s No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, Klein’s Hot Money and Lovelock’s We Belong to Gaia. Authors including Amitav Ghosh, Jared Diamond, Rachel Carson and Masanobu Fukuoka also make the list.
The full list of books:
Greta Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference
No One is Too Small to Make a Difference collects Greta Thunberg’s history-making speeches, from addresses at climate rallies around the world audiences at the UN, the World Economic Forum, and the British Parliament.
Naomi Klein, Hot Money
Klein lays out the evidence that deregulated capitalism is waging war on the climate, and shows that, in order to stop the damage, we must change everything we think about how our world is run.
Timothy Morton, All Art is Ecological
All Art is Ecological explores the strangeness of living in an age of mass extinction, and shows us that emotions and experience are the basis for a deep philosophical engagement with ecology.
George Monbiot, This Can’t Be Happening
Monbiot calls on humanity to stop averting its gaze from the destruction of the living planet, and wake up to the greatest predicament we have ever faced.
Bill McKibben, An Idea Can Go Extinct
An Idea Can Go Extinct is Bill McKibben’s impassioned, groundbreaking account of how, by changing the earth’s entire atmosphere, the weather and the most basic forces around us, ‘we are ending nature.’
Amitav Ghosh, Uncanny and Improbable Events
In this personal and wide-ranging exploration of how our collective imaginations fail to grasp the scale of environmental destruction, Amitav Ghosh summons writers and novelists to confront the most urgent story of our times.
Tim Flannery, A Warning from the Golden Toad
Flannery’s A Warning from the Golden Toad tells the story of the earth’s climate, and how we have changed it.
Terry Tempest Williams, The Clan of One-Breasted Women
Williams’s essays explore the impact of nuclear testing, the vital importance of environmental legislation, and the guiding spirit of conservation.
Michael Pollan, Food Rules
Pollan’s wise and witty critique of the western industrialised diet, distils the wisdom of history and traditional cultures to three simple rules: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species
Kimmerer guides us towards a more reciprocal, grateful and joyful relationship with our animate earth, from the wild leeks in the field to the deer in the woods.
Dai Qing, The Most Dammed Country in the World
The courageous, unflinching speeches and writings collected in The Most Dammed Country in the World detail the devastating human and environmental cost of China’s economic rise.
Wangari Maathai, The World We Once Lived In
From the Congo Basin to the traditions of the Kikuyu people, the lucid, incisive writings in The World We Once Lived In explore the sacred power of trees, and why humans lay waste to the forests that keep us alive.
Jared Diamond, The Last Tree on Easter Island
This is Jared Diamond’s haunting account of visiting the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island, showing how a remote civilization destroyed itself by exploiting its own natural resources – and why we must heed this warning.
Wendell Berry, What I Stand for Is What I Stand On
From the ravages of the global economy to the great pleasures of growing a garden, Berry’s essays represent a heartfelt call for humankind to mend our broken relationship with the earth, and with each other.
Edward O Wilson, Every Species is a Masterpiece
Every Species is a Masterpiece brings together some of Edward O. Wilson’s most profound and significant writings on the rich diversity of life on Earth, our place in it, and our obligation to conserve the planet’s fragile ecosystems.
James Lovelock, We Belong to Gaia
We Belong to Gaia draws on decades of wisdom to lay out the history of our remarkable planet, to show that it is not ours to be exploited – and warns us that it is fighting back.
Masanobu Fukuoka, The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah
In The Dragonfly Will Be the Messiah, the celebrated pioneer of the ‘do-nothing’ farming method reflects on global ecological trauma and argues that we must radically transform our understanding of both nature and ourselves in order to have any chance of healing.
Arne Naess, There is No Point of No Return
Emphasizing joy in the world, human cooperation and the value of all living things, this selection of Arne Naess’ philosophical writings is filled with wit, learning and an intense connection with nature.
Rachel Carson, Man’s War Against Nature
With the precision of a scientist and the simplicity of a fable, Rachel Carson reveals how man-made pesticides have destroyed wildlife, creating a world of polluted streams and silent songbirds.
Aldo Leopold, Think Like a Mountain
In this lyrical meditation on America’s wildlands, Aldo Leopold considers the different ways humans shape the natural landscape, and describes for the first time the far-reaching phenomenon now known as ‘trophic cascades’.
