What Is the Most Influential Environmental Book?

Posted: 14-Jun-2007; Updated: 29-Aug-2007

• Print
• Send to friend
• +

Spread the word! Grab one of our green summer reading badges to post on your blog or website.

Poll results

---

What's missing?

Is there an obvious choice that's not on our list? Write it in on our blog.

Nonfiction

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
Marc Reisner

Reisner's compelling chronicle of water management and mismanagement in the West brought well-deserved attention to the pressing need for wise water use policy.

Collapse
Jared Diamond

With modern-day lessons from places as diverse as Japan and Rwanda, Diamond's haunting narrative exploration through doomed civilizations makes the case that ecological catastrophe can be averted if we make the right choices.

The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
E.O. Wilson

In this wonderfully written book on the marvels of nature, renowned Harvard entomologist Wilson makes the moral case to preserve biodiversity from a humanistic, religious and practical standpoint.

Desert Solitaire
Edward Abbey

This spirited critique of the car culture that has blighted our national parks is also an invitation to experience the natural world.

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

Long before An Inconvenient Truth wakened the public consciousness to global warming, Gore argued in Earth in the Balance, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."

The Omnivore's Dilemma
Michael Pollan

Taking a naturalist’s point of view, Pollan follows the journey of four meals from farm to table: the corn-addicted path of McDonald's take-out, a home-cooked dinner of Whole Foods organics, a sustainably grown supper "off the grid" and a modern hunter-gatherer's feast.

A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold

In this 1949 literary landmark, Leopold, a hunter and forester, uses close observation to argue the intangible benefits of wilderness by describing ecosystems from the perspective of the land and the animals that dwell there.

Silent Spring
Rachel Carson

In her book that gave birth to the modern environmental movement, Carson exposes the hazards of pesticides and other pollution, sounding both a warning and a call to action.

Song for a Blue Ocean
Carl Safina

Chronicling Safina’s ocean expeditions and encounters with scientists, fishermen and sea creatures, Song for a Blue Ocean exults in the author’s wide and varied background: Safina writes with a scientist's knowledge, a fisherman's background, a writer's lyricism and a conservationist's passion.

Walden
Henry David Thoreau

More than a literary staple of English classes across the United States, Thoreau’s most famous work, which chronicles his two-year retreat to the woods, celebrates the simple life.

Wilderness and the American Mind
Roderick Nash

In this 1967 classic on the origins of America's environmental movement, Nash makes the case that the view of undeveloped wilderness as a treasure worth saving is a uniquely American idea.

Fiction

Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver

A rich story of a woman's return to her childhood home as she confronts her past and tends to her ailing father, Animal Dreams weaves together community, memory, Native American legend and environmental activism.

The Lorax
Dr. Seuss

Spinning an unforgettable tale of a world once lush with truffula trees, this rhyming classic — which ends on a hopeful note — is a whimsical way to introduce complex environmental ideas to young children.