May 5, 2012
An Alternate Sustainability Reading List
We all fondly remember our college days and our favorite professor’s ‘additional reading’ list that always followed the 15 page syllabus. Those pages were chalk full of titles that, not being the classics, didn’t make the cut to be required reading. And while some of us still have those lists sitting painfully free of any […]
We all fondly remember our college days and our favorite professor’s ‘additional reading’ list that always followed the 15 page syllabus. Those pages were chalk full of titles that, not being the classics, didn’t make the cut to be required reading. And while some of us still have those lists sitting painfully free of any check marks, others of you need to continuously find new books to feed your knowledge appetite.
So take out your pens, ready your computer’s copy function, because here is another list, and it’s one that will further your understanding of the great topic of sustainability.
If you’re not familiar with the topic of sustainability, there are of course the classics, Silent Spring, The Ecology of Commerce, Biomimicry, and Cradle to Cradle, and some of my recommendations, Natural Capitalism and Resilience Thinking.
However, for those of you looking to go above and beyond, Lance Hosey over at GreenBlue has provided a list of his personal favorites; books that have influenced his thinking on sustainability. The list covers all sorts of topics, including globalization, deep ecology, and humanity’s connection to nature, while also ranging in years from 1967 to 2010.
But I’d like to ask a question of those of you who have read books from the below list. Make comments here on our blog and let us know which titles you would recommend? And how have they changed your thoughts on the topic of sustainability?
- The Wooing of Earth, René Dubos (1980).
- Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, E. O. Wilson (1999).
- The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, David Abram (1997).
- The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson (1965).
- The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, Fritjof Capra (1997).
- Human Nature: A Blueprint for Managing the Earth—By People, For People, James Trefil (2005).
- The World Without Us, Alan Weisman (2007).
- Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation, Steven Johnson (2010).
- Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace, Vandana Shiva (2006).
- One World: The Ethics of Globalization, Peter Singer (2004).