Ecosocialist Bookshelf is an occasional feature. We can’t review every book we receive, but we will list and link to any that seem relevant to Climate & Capitalism’s mission, along with brief descriptions. Books described here may be reviewed in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that we agree with everything (or even anything!) these books say.
Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, & Beata Ernman
OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE
Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis
Penguin Random House, 2020
Written by a remarkable family and told through the voice of an iconoclastic mother, this is the firsthand story of how Greta Thunberg decided to go on strike from school, igniting a worldwide rebellion.
Saru Jayaraman & Kathryn De Master, editors
BITE BACK
People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning
University of California Press, 2020
The food system is broken, but there is a revolution underway to fix it. Bite Back brings together leading experts and activists who are challenging corporate power by addressing injustices in our food system, from wage inequality to environmental destruction to corporate bullying. In paired chapters, activists present a problem arising from corporate control of the food system and then recount how an organizing campaign successfully tackled it.
Out of the Woods Collective
HOPE AGAINST HOPE: Writings on Ecological Crisis
Common Notions, 2020
The Out of the Woods collective investigates the critical relation between climate change and capitalism and calls for the expansion of our conceptual toolbox to organize within and against ecological crisis, charting a revolutionary course adequate to our times. They call their solution “disaster communism”—the collective power to transform our future political horizons from the ruins and establish a climate future based in common life.
Habib Ayeb & Ray Bush
FOOD INSECURITY AND REVOLUTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Anthem Press, 2019
Examines the political economy of agrarian transformation with case studies of Egypt and Tunisia. The authors explore the continued failure of post-uprising counter-revolutionary governments to directly address issues of rural development that put the position and role of small farmers centre stage.
Diana Rodgers & Robb Wolf
SACRED COW
The Case for (Better) Meat
Benbella Books, 2020
We’re told beef is bad for us and cattle farming is horrible for the environment. The authors — a dietician and a biochemist — disagree. Their science-based account explores the quandaries and misconceptions we face in raising and eating animals, arguing that meat (done right) should have a place on the table.
Robert M. Hazen
SYMPHONY IN C
Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything
W.W. Norton, 2019
We live on a carbon planet, and we are carbon life. No other element is so central to our well-being. Where did Earth come from? What will ultimately become of it—and of us? This beautifully written book by the founder of the Deep Carbon Project examines the latest scientific research in a powerful examination of the past, present, and future of life’s most essential element.
Thanks! I love these recommendations!