What’s at the Top of Your Stack?

After the Flood by Lydia Barnett

“It’s a history of the way that Enlightenment European philosophers thought about Noah’s flood and how that allowed them to conceptualize the world. I think it’s an interesting book to read in the context of people who work on climate change, because it’s all about trying to understand how people in the past—in Europe, specifically—thought about weather and how much and in what way they could affect the world around them.”

Maya Domeshek
Research Associate
Resources for the Future

Field Trip podcast

“One thing I really like about this podcast is the idea that, when you’re trying to achieve a goal—as well-intentioned as that goal can be—it’s really important to think about the individuals who are going to be affected directly and to take those considerations into account as you build your governance structures.”

Nicholas Roy
Senior Research Analyst
Resources for the Future

Rural Review newsletter

“The Rural Review covers all things rural. It’s part of the Rural Reconciliation Project, which is run out of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. This is one of the newsletters that comes into my inbox that I check out, because I’m always learning something new from various rural scholars and in lots of accessible formats.”

Sarah Mills
Researcher and Lecturer
University of Michigan

Purple Mountains film

“Purple Mountains is a movie done by a professional snowboarder named Jeremy Jones about how to get different types of people on board with climate change. He’s someone who spent his whole life in the mountains, assessing snow, and seeing the changes. He started an organization called Protect Our Winters with this idea of getting people who enjoy the outdoors to get engaged on climate change. One of the most exciting things in the movie is seeing the different types of people who are interested in the outdoors who have different political persuasions. There’s a real potential to broaden the coalition of people to support climate change mitigation and carbon dioxide removal.”

Gregory Nemet
Professor
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

“If we are not successful with accelerating the rate of launching new clean energy projects, I think it’s worth reading this book by Neal Stephenson, who describes in quite vivid, sensational, and, at times, humorous detail what geoengineering will be required to address the climate situation. It’s a romp through a very different perspective of the near future.”

Jim Connaughton
Chair of the Board
Nautilus Data Technologies

“The Tragedy of Stopping Climate Change” by Jessi Jezewska Stevens

“It’s an essay written by a novelist and writer that was published in Foreign Affairs in 2021, in which she reflects on the role her profession could play in telling the climate story—what writers should do and what stories there are to tell.”

Michael Pahle
Head of the Climate and Energy Policy Working Group
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers

“I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old, and a lot of my reading time is reading with my kids. I like to introduce different concepts to them at their level. I’ve really enjoyed this book, which I found to be a really nice introduction, appropriate for young children, to concepts that touch on living in a community, sustainability, and working with the planet. For anyone with young children, I would recommend it.”

Eric Kort
Associate Professor
University of Michigan

Aubrey-Maturin series of nautical historical novels by Patrick O’Brian

“One way to describe this series of 20 books is that it’s about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. It’s swashbuckling historical fiction. One of the main characters is a spy, a doctor, and an amateur naturalist. It’s both poetic and scientifically substantive about the environment. It’s a serial of 20 books; one flows into the next. If you end up liking the first book, good news: There are 19 more.”

James Boyd
Senior Fellow, Associate Vice President for Research and Policy Engagement
Resources for the Future