books
-
![]()
![]()
The green message in 'Eat, Pray, Love'
Elizabeth Gilbert -- author of the bestselling "Eat, Pray, Love," now a big-budget Julia Roberts movie -- makes a strong case for going childfree.
-
![]()
![]()
Be more like Manhattan to save the earth, and don’t go halfway
The greenest place to live is a dense city like New York, David Owen argues in his book Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability. We chat about urban vs. rural living and pitfalls of "decorative transit" and "density light."
-
![]()
![]()
‘CAFO Reader’ editor Daniel Imhoff on the ills of factory ‘farms’
The CAFO Reader — a new book featuring essays by farmers Wendell Berry, Becky Weed, and Fred Kirschenmann, Republican speech writer Matthew Scully, journalist Michael Pollan, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., among many others — gives a full picture of the environmental, social, and ethical implications of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), and includes a […]
-
![]()
![]()
Ask Umbra’s Book Club discussion starts next week
Dearest readers, Next week, we’ll begin our discussion of The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One by Sylvia Earle. If you haven’t gotten your book yet, there’s still time! Take it to a beach or air conditioned coffee shop near you and dive in! It really is a fast and […]
-
![]()
![]()
Gingrich slams Obama on Gulf gusher and sounds off on climate
Newt Gingrich, green conservative.Photo: Gage SkidmoreA couple of years ago, Newt Gingrich was sounding like a climate activist. The former Republican speaker of the House posed with current Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a couch in front of the Capitol for a 2008 ad sponsored by Al Gore’s organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection. “[O]ur […]
-
![]()
![]()
What have environmentalists been most wrong about?
Photo: limonada via FlickrFirst things first: Don’t ask me how I went from being an editor of Grist to an expert in wrongness. It’s a long story. Suffice it to say that in 2006, I left Grist (with much regret) in order to write a book about being wrong. (That’s the eponymous Being Wrong: Adventures […]
-
![]()
![]()
How to be ‘Fast, Fresh, and Green’ in the kitchen [book review]
Like recycling, listening to NPR, and caring about the World Cup, everyday cooking has become a de rigeur activity for those with certain class and cultural aspirations. And that’s as it should be. We need more home cooks. If diversified, human-scale, community-directed farms are going to thrive, then a much broader swath of the population […]
-
![]()
![]()
‘Scary Disease Girl’ Maryn McKenna on antibiotic-resistant staph [PODCAST]
“Scary Disease Girl”: Maryn McKennaMaryn McKenna is arguably the premier U.S. public health journalist. Not many on the beat can boast a bio like this: Maryn McKenna’s newsroom nickname is Scary Disease Girl, and she earned it. She has reported from inside a field hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a village on Thailand’s […]
-
![]()
![]()
The best books about the deep blue sea, just in time for World Oceans Day
All reading lists are incomplete and arbitrary. This is especially true of a list limited to a dozen works about the ocean, the blue immensity that comprises 71 percent of our planet. So take this list with a grain of sea salt — and suggest your own favorites in the comments section below. ———————————————– Log […]
