Books are powerful tools that shape our worldviews and create new ideas. For this reason, we have created our personal book list at Green Hub. We selected five books that tackle the issue of climate change, the relationship between humans and nature, and environmental history from a different perspective. There are present philosophical essays, journalistic investigations, global narratives, and novels on the list. In their own ways, these books push the reader to actively reflect on their perspective of the world and which narratives have led to them. Moreover, these book lists can be used by the single reader to find an engaging book for themselves or as ideas for a present to make someone close to you reflect on what nature is. We hope you find this short list helpful!
1. The Prophet and the wizard
Author: Charles C. Mann
Wizards and Prophet are two ways of viewing nature. The first sees it as something that, through technology and science, can be modified for the good of all mankind. The second understands it as a complex living system that must be respected and lived locally. This book is the history of these two ideas and the men who developed them. If you are interested in today's debates on our relationship with nature, this book is for you.
2. Stay with the trouble
Author: Donna Haraway
This book enacts different forms of analysis and activism. It is not only that the book transcends disciplinary boundaries of biology, sciences studies, art history, philosophy, and dense description of political activism most often found in social sciences, it offers much more: pushes the reader to question from which concepts we make our concepts, from which ideas we make ideas. Haraway suggests it is time to start making holistic kin on our sick planet.
3. The Overstory
Author: Richard Powers
The overstory is a fictional novel about activism and resistance. It is the story of a group of strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, brought together to save it from catastrophe. Moving through history and across landscapes, this tree-filled novel displays humanity's potential to destroy or restore the natural world.
4. The Great Derangement: Climate change and the Unthinkable
Author: Amitav Ghosh
A fascinating book that tackles and tries to make sense of climate change from three different perspectives. In the first part of the book, Ghosh raises the question of why the novel, as a narrative and expression, is incapable of relating to climate change. The second part of the book reconstructs the history of climate change by focusing on the geographies of imperialism and the start of carbon base economy. The last section of the book treats the politics of climate change. Ghosh points at the issue of individualization of today's politics, making climate change synonymous with political identity, but as Ghosh points out, if we think individually about climate change is unlikely to find a solution.
5. The End of the Ocean
Author: Maja Lunde
The End of the Ocean is a powerful novel in which two main stories from different times intertwine, portraying a picture of connection and meaning.
Norway 2017: 70-year-old climate activist Signe sets sails alone on a hazardous voyage across the ocean in her sailboat. On a boat, a cargo that could change the destiny of the planet.
France 2041: A great drought forces the people of Southern Europe to flee to the north, and there is not enough water for everyone. However, the young father David and his daughter Lou discover an ancient sailboat in a dried-out garden, miles away from the closest shore. Signe's sailboat.
The End of the Ocean is a profoundly moving father-daughter story of survival and a clarion call for climate action.
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