Help Choose the Next Read for KQED’s Climate Book Club

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman

Publication date: Feb. 2, 2021; 384 pages

Known for his writing in the New York Times and his books How to Cook Everything and VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health … for Good, Mark Bittman embarked on an ambitious quest to present the history of humankind’s relationship to food.

A subject which, the reader learns, encompasses everything: “You can’t talk about agriculture without talking about the environment,” Bittman wrote. “You can’t talk about animal welfare without talking about the welfare of food workers, and you can’t talk about food workers without talking about income inequality, racism and immigration.”

The New York Times book review said Bittman gives a “clear and compelling compendium of modern agriculture. In particular, his rendering of the early mechanization of the American farm is epic and engrossing.”

Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age by Nicole Seymour

Publication date: Oct. 30, 2018; 304 pages

Does environmentalism have to be so serious, so unfunny, so doom and gloom? In this book, Nicole Seymour examines the movement in an irreverent, campy, frivolous, playful, even funny way.

David Naguib Pellow, author of What is Critical Environmental Justice?, praised the book: “In an era in which environmental crises have been normalized and environmentalists are viewed by many as overly earnest irritants, Nicole Seymour gives us something we crave (even if we’re loath to admit it!). Bad Environmentalism offers stunningly original, creative, and playful readings of a diverse range of cultural forms, refuses the binaries of eco-purity politics, and advances a hearty support of ambiguity, irreverence, contradiction, humor, and pleasure, while holding firm against the racism and homophobia that often undergird mainstream environmentalist campaigns and logics. This is a challenging, often hilarious and game-changing book.”

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Publication date: Dec. 6, 2022; 336 pages

Set in the near future, this work of science fiction follows Wanda, a luminous, unusual child born during a hurricane. As she comes of age, Florida slips away and grows increasingly wild, ravaged by climate change and rising waters.

From the dust jacket: “As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love and purpose in a place remade by nature.”

In praise for the book, a New York Times book review said Brooks-Dalton’s post-apocalypse vision is different and “not so dystopian.” “It’s good to read an alternate and more hopeful story of how life might be experienced on a planet that is partly dying but also evolving, even if fewer humans remain.”

Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California by Adina Merenlender with Brendan Buhler

Publication date: Sept. 7, 2021; 296 pages

Produced in collaboration with the UC California Naturalist Program, Climate Stewardship focuses on how Californians are working to solve environmental and climate problems across the state.

Telling stories of small, community-led activism that is effective and inspirational, Merelender brings the reader from Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County to Olive Orchards in San Diego to Joshua trees in the desert to the coastal habitat of the California abalone.

From the publisher: “Climate Stewardship shares stories from everyday people and shows how their actions enhance the resilience of communities and ecosystems across ten distinct bioregions. Climate science that justifies these actions is woven throughout, making it easy to learn about Earth’s complex systems. The authors interpret and communicate these stories in a way that is enjoyable, inspiring, and even amusing.”

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Publication date: April 2, 2019; 224 pages

The author tells the story of Native peoples’ resistance and calls for environmentalists to learn from the rich history of activism from the Indigenous community.

From the publisher: “Through the unique lens of ‘Indigenized environmental justice,’ Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.”

In praise, the Los Angeles Review of Books wrote: “Gilio-Whitaker takes the reader on a historical journey that, had it been penned about the Jewish Holocaust or the ‘ethnic cleansing’ conducted at the behest of any number of 20th-century despots, would be well known. Yet when it comes to the United States’s continuing campaign to wipe tribal communities from the map, most Americans are in a state of denial that such a thing could happen.”

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