Here are 100 books that Whole Earth Discipline fans have personally recommended if you like
Whole Earth Discipline.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can.
George Schaller is my idol and hero. His book inspired me when I was just 17 years old, then a reluctant student of engineering. It was the beacon of scientific clarity that focused my passion for tigers and nature towards clear-headed action, motivating me to struggle for over a decade and change my career to one devoted to the pursuit of tiger biology and conservation. It is a superb popular science book, in which the writing also rises to the highest literary quality-one that takes you right into the world of beleaguered tigers of India in the early 1960s.
The Deer and the Tiger is Schaller's detailed account of the ecology and behavior of Bengal tigers and four species of the hoofed mammals on which they prey, based on his observations in India's Kanha National Park.
"This book is a treasure house of biological information and it is also a delight to read. . . . Excellent phoographs accompany the text."-Robert K. Enders, American Scientist
"The one book that has been my greatest source of inspiration is The Deer and the Tiger by George Schaller, based on the first ever scientific field study of the tiger. . . .…
This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can.
Sunquists were my mentors who introduced me to the methods of safely catching wild tigers and radio-tracking them skillfully thereafter. Mel, a pioneer in large carnivore telemetry studies, and Fiona, an accomplished naturalist, writer and wildlife photographer, have collaborated in this book that describes in detail the first ever radio-tracking study of wild tigers they conducted in Chitwan Park Nepal in the early 1970s. It brilliantly captures the ecology of these tigers, the social context of conservation in Nepal, and their own love affair that blossoms after a chance encounter in the park. The sparkling, witty narrative and the accurate tiger science encased within it, make this a memorable read.
"Tiger Moon" is the powerful, poetic story of the Sunquists' two years studying tigers in Nepal. A new afterword tells the story of promising efforts to reconnect fractured Nepalese tiger habitats.
This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can.
This is a non-fiction classic about ‘tiger culture’ of a remote part of India where tigers do not fear humans as they do elsewhere: in fact, they even hunt down and eat dozens of people every year in this giant Sundarbans swamp where natural prey is scarce. Montgomery is brilliantly evocative while bringing to life both nature and humans of the swamp, making the book a NY Times best-seller. The local culture, where tigers are loathed, feared, and revered as deities—all at the same—is portrayed stunningly. These habitats, tiger behaviors, and local cultures are strikingly different from the ones I describe in my book. Montgomery views the tiger through a filter of human culture, whereas I do so through a filter of hard ecology. Yet, we admire each other’s work because we are both under the spell of the same tiger.
From the author of The Soul of an Octopus and bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig, a book that earned Sy Montgomery her status as one of the most celebrated wildlife writers of our time, Spell of the Tiger brings readers to the Sundarbans, a vast tangle of mangrove swamp and tidal delta that lies between India and Bangladesh. It is the only spot on earth where tigers routinely eat people-swimming silently behind small boats at night to drag away fishermen, snatching honey collectors and woodcutters from the forest. But, unlike in other parts of Asia where tigers are rapidly…
This is a unique tale of exciting personal encounters with wild tigers as well my hard science that revealed their mysterious world. Readers will experience the conflicts, violence, and corruption, inherent to struggle to recover the charismatic, dangerous predator. Among Tigers is not the usual doomsday prophecy, but a clear roadmap for how we can grow tiger populations to new levels of abundance. While it does not gloss over the very real challenges, overall, it delivers a message of reasonable hope to nature lovers worldwide. I have scientifically researched tigers and, fought passionately to save them, making me uniquely qualified to tell this story like no one else can.
Geoff is an eminent Historian having scripted many classics such as the Civil War TV series and, Diane, is a former Newsweek journalist who has reported on environmental issues. Both are tiger-keen aficionados’ who are—for some unfathomable reason—also morbidly fascinated by generations of gritty, grimy, and aggravatingly stubborn conservationists in India, who have fought to save India’s wild tigers through the colonial and post-colonial eras. They also write in an engaging, witty style focusing on tiger-obsessed humans rather than the magnificent cat. As one of their ‘subjects’ I believe this book provides the appropriate social and historical contexts for my own book.
My research and writing in the field of emergency or disaster management has been focused on the concept of hazard mitigation. This means reducing the impact of disasters, the creation of hazard resilient and sustainable communities, and the application of scientific and technical expertise to the task. We all live in a world where it has become more important than ever to make intelligent decisions driven by a comprehension of the properties of the physical universe. It is also a world in which economic self-interest and political interests may impede that idealistic goal. I have a sense of urgency about reducing the efficacy of such impediments.
When I began to focus on and assess climate change as an emergency or disaster management issue, especially in the context of recurring natural disasters, this book by Andrew Guzman struck a nerve that helped me focus on what mattered most.
The human costs associated with what would be the catastrophic consequences of our failure to address what the author suggests is the greatest threat to human civilization are mind-blowing, to say the least. This is an excellent, if somewhat scary, overview.
Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
In Overheated, Guzman takes climate change out of the realm of scientific abstraction to explore its real-world consequences. He writes not as a scientist, but as an authority on international law and economics. He takes as his starting point…
I am an economist who has written broadly on microeconomics, energy and natural resource markets, and environmental economics. My recent work in environmental economics has focused on climate change, and I’ve published a book and many articles on the topic. I think it’s important to understand that while there is a lot we understand about climate change, there is also much we don’t understand, and what the uncertainty implies about what we should do. My concern is the possibility of a climate catastrophe. What are the chances, and what should we do? Those questions have driven much of my research and writing.
Nordhaus was one of the first economists to explain the nature of climate change and why dealing with it is of economic importance. In this book, he uses his DICE (Dynamic Integrated Climate and Economy) model to help explain --- at a textbook level --- how unrestricted GHG emissions can cause climate change to occur and lead to serious problems in the future. He also utilizes the model to illustrate some of the uncertainties we face when thinking about the climate system and when trying to predict the changes to expect under different policies. The book thereby provides students (and others) with a good introduction to climate change policy.
I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
Steve’s book is analytically challenging, but he has great examples and a knack for conceptualizing the core problems that are making it so hard for our world to grapple with climate change and things like mass extinction. He shows how there are three interlocking problems that all go back to how the modern state system was created as something competitive and uncoordinated, abstract from the land it’s on, and short-sighted with its politics.
Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to…
I have been engaged as a teacher of religion and ecology since the first Earth Day 50 years ago. That has entailed writing some prize-winning books,Earth Community, Earth Ethics(1996) and Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key(2013). Now I want to pass along distilled learnings to my grandchildren as they face a planet in tumult. The form—love letters—and the audience—future generations as represented by my grandkids—moves me to focus on effective communication of a highly personal sort to young people on matters vital to their lives. It’s a nice bookend near the end of my own life.
I am well aware of the threats to human society and the planet. I welcome anyone who understands them and has thought them through, then turns to sources of wisdom to guide us. Beal does all this and taps sources of wisdom readily available to us (in his case he draws on major biblical themes and does so with a critical eye for both their benefit and harm).
With faith, hope, and compassion, acclaimed religion scholar Timothy Beal shows us how to navigate the inevitabilities of the climate crisis and the very real—and very near—possibility of human extinction
What if it’s too late to save ourselves from climate crisis? When Time is Short is a meditation for what may be a finite human future that asks how we got here to help us imagine a different relationship to the natural world.
Modern capitalism, as it emerged, drew heavily upon the Christian belief in human exceptionalism and dominion over the planet, and these ideas still undergird our largely secular…
I'm co-founder of a grassroots social justice, civic engagement, and service organization called ForwardCT, which I started with my friend and current state representative Eleni Kavros DeGraw with the intention of mobilizing community-centered action. Our work centers on these four pillars: Connect, Inform, Serve, and Lead. Those pillars guide my work as chair of my town’s Clean Energy Commission, as teacher and facilitator of workshops and events, and as an author of books for young people. I'm drawn to the powerful use of storytelling as a tool for starting conversations, stirring up “good trouble,” and inspiring activism. Read a book, approach your library or town to host a community conversation, leave with actionable takeaways, repeat!
I chose Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change because I live in Connecticut and my own family and friend group have been gravely impacted by tick-borne infections. In fact, the subplot of my novel focuses on the frustrating story of a family seeking answers to this “mystery” illness.
We are at a moment where climate change is accelerating new and worsening pathogenic diseases and public health isn’t catching up fast enough. Mary Beth Pfeiffer provides a well-researched glimpse into the politics and pain of tick-borne infections in a climate-changing world.
I recommend this book as a community conversation starter because, more and more, citizens are coming together to share medical resources and put pressure on the public health community to act.
"Superbly written and researched." -Booklist "Builds a strong case." -Kirkus Lyme disease is spreading rapidly around the globe as ticks move into places they could not survive before. The first epidemic to emerge in the era of climate change, the disease infects half a million people in the US and Europe each year, and untold multitudes in Canada, China, Russia, and Australia. Mary Beth Pfeiffer shows how we have contributed to this growing menace, and how modern medicine has underestimated its danger. She tells the heart-rending stories of families destroyed by a single tick bite, of children disabled, and of…
I’m a science fiction writer who loves my chosen genre for the promises it makes for the worlds that we can have—and the warnings that it offers for the worlds that might be ours if we don’t take care. I’ve picked books for people who like their thinking to be challenged, and who also long for the world to be a much better place. These are the kinds of books I love to read—and the kinds of books I try to write.
Earth has suffered devastating environmental collapse and is now a world of jungles and monsters. The last remnants of humanity are split between those clinging to the surface, and those who have removed themselves to the upper atmosphere. We follow Pearl, living in an isolated forest region, suddenly taken to the stars. A vivid and luscious reimagining of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.
"A richly imagined eco-gothic tale." - The Guardian
"Exquisitely realised." - The Times
After the ravages of the Green Winter, Earth is a place of deep jungles and monstrous animals. The last of the human race is divided into surface dwellers and the people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the Earth s atmosphere.
Bearing witness to this divided planet is Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, who lives in the isolated forests of Gobari, navigating her mad mother and the strange blue light in the sky. But Pearl…
