This year, the holidays (Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, and New Year) fall between a sobering election, a disappointing climate conference, and an ominous inauguration. To get a recipient’s attention amid these worrying times, a gift book must offer information, perspective, hope, or distraction. A bit of dazzle might help, too.
The title leading off the list below, “Atlas of a Threatened Planet,” combines information and dazzle; its 150 infographics delight the eye even as they depict the dangers posed by a changing climate, water crises, and environmental degradation.
“Before They Vanish” and “Category Five” lead readers on hold-your-breath deep dives into biodiversity and extreme weather, surfacing some solutions in the process. The 130 color photographs of “Otherworldly Antarctica,” on the other hand, might take their breath away.
In their new books, climate scientist Anna Farro Henderson and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson offer much-needed perspective — and hope. And it’s easy to imagine someone receiving any one of the next three titles, on climate change and food, and being immediately captivated by the cover they’ve just unwrapped.
The list ends with three promises of restorative distraction: a collection of short climate fiction, an anthology of “short plays imagining the future,” and the new novel, “Playground,” by Richard Powers, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of “Overstory.”
Giving one of these books to a friend or family member could help both of you weather your holidays better.
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.
Atlas of a Threatened Planet: 150 Infographics to Help Anyone Save the World by Esther Gonstalla (Island Press 2024, 224 pages, $35.00 paperback)
Our planet is a fascinating and complex place, but the challenges we face can seem over-whelming. How does our climate actually work? Should we worry about the global supply of drinking water? How much land do we need to grow food? In Atlas of a Threatened Planet, award-winning book and graphic designer Esther Gonstalla digs into these questions and many more through her attractive and easy-to-understand infographics. Best known for “Our World in 50 Graphics,” Gonstalla turns her eye in this book to the most critical threats to our environment, from shrinking glaciers and declining biodiversity to shifting ocean currents. But all is not lost. Changes in technology, infrastructure, and outlook can still help us protect the places we love.
Before They Vanish: Saving Nature’s Populations — and Ourselves by Paul R. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and Rodolfo Dirzo, with foreword by Jared Diamond (The Johns Hopkins University Press 2024, 392 pages, $29.95)
Can we save threatened animals and ecosystems in the midst of a mass extinction? The answer is a resounding yes! Before They Vanish shows us how. In this impassioned book, renowned conservation scientists Paul R. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and Rodolfo Dirzo urge us to shift our thinking. They argue that conservationists have placed too much emphasis on the extinction of entire species. By shifting our focus to identifying extinction threats at the more localized population level, we can intervene more rapidly and effectively to prevent broader declines before it’s too late. This change in perspective represents a critical step in saving these vanishing species; early detection and intervention may be our last, best hope for stemming the tide of this global crisis.
Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans that Feed Them by Porter Fox (Little, Brown & Co. 2024, 288 pages, $30.00)
Here is the story of the largest storms on earth and how they are growing bigger and stronger. The tale of extreme weather doesn’t begin with floods, fires, or even the atmosphere. It begins with the ocean. Oceans create weather, floods, droughts, and most of the geophysical fallout of global warming. Exactly how, award-winning writer Porter Fox contends, depends on invisible ocean currents, planetary cycles just now being defined, and processes in the deep ocean that may well have already saved us from the worst effects of the climate crisis. In Category Five, Fox shadows explorers, scientists, oceanographers, and weather forecasters as they attempt to understand, forestall, and possibly harness the awesome power of our oceans.
Otherworldly Antarctica: Ice, Rock, and Wind at the Polar Extreme by Edmund Stump (University of Chicago 2024, 168 pages, $28.00)
With stunning photographs, Antarctic scientist Edmund Stump takes us to one of the most remote and pristine regions on the planet. Otherworldly Antarctica contains 130 original color photographs, complemented by artwork by Marlene Hill Donnelly. Over three chapters—on the ice, the rock, and the wind—we meet snowy paths first followed during Antarctica’s Heroic Age, climb the central spire of the Organ Pipe Peaks, and peer into the crater of the volcanic Mount Erebus. Along the way, we see the beauty of ice-cored moraines, meltwater ponds, lenticular clouds, icebergs, and glaciers. Having studied and photographed more of the continent-spanning Transantarctic Mountains than anyone else, Stump is uniquely suited to share these alien sights.
Core Samples: A Climate Scientist’s Experiments in Politics and Motherhood by Anna Farro Henderson (University of Minnesota Press 2024, 208 pages, $18.95 paperback)
How can we use stories to accelerate action on climate change? In Core Samples, climate scientist and policy expert Anna Farro Henderson narrates her own journey, exploring how science is done, discussed, legislated, and imagined. Through stories both raucous and poignant, she brings readers into the daily rhythms and intimacies of research and policymaking. Henderson’s eclectic, unconventional essays include field notes, packing lists, and lactation records. Readers are invited on trips as far afield as the Juneau Icefield and as close to home as a town hall meeting in America’s corn belt. A love letter to science and a bracing portrait of the many obstacles women face, Core Samples illuminates our messy, contradictory humanity.
What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (One World 2024, 496 pages, $34.00)
Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures. Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from all of us, with what-ever we have to offer—to create. If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it—this book is for you.
The Blue Planet: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos by Mark J. Easter (Patagonia 2024, pages, $30.00)
The Blue Plate is the perfect dinner companion for food lovers who care about the planet. Ecologist Mark Easter details the impact the foods you love have on the planet. Organized by the ingredients of a typical dinner party, including seafood, salad, bread, chicken, steak, potatoes, and fruit pie with ice cream, each chapter tells a story about these foods through the lens of the climate crisis: The soil that grew the lettuce; the farmers, ranchers and orchardists who steward the land; the grocers and workers at dairies and farms who labor to bring food to the table. What can you do to eat more sustainably? The answer is not necessarily a plant-based diet. Low-carbon, in-season alternatives can make your favorite foods more sustainable and more delicious.
Love the Foods That Love the Planet: Recipes to Cool the Planet and Excite the Senses by Cathy Katin-Grazzini (Health Communications, Inc. 2024, 432 pages, $26.95)
For those who are concerned with the pressing climate crisis and who want to mitigate the growing threats of extreme weather, wildfires, loss of biodiversity, and food insecurity, Cathy Katin-Grazzini has compiled a delicious medley of powerful plant-based recipes that can help revitalize the health of our environment and our bodies. Love the Foods That Love the Planet is packed with climate challenge insights, features both creative and traditional cuisine from around the world, and includes eye-popping photography by Giordano Katin-Grazzini. To anyone who wants to bring a mindful approach to their diet but doesn’t want to skimp on taste, Love the Foods That Love the Planet offers practicable solutions—for the newbie to the most experienced chef.
Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World’s Food by George Steinmetz and Joel K. Bourne, with foreword by Michael Pollan (Abrams Books 2024, 256 pages, $60.00)
Do you know where your food comes from? To find out, photographer George Steinmetz spent a decade documenting food production in more than 36 countries on 6 continents and 5 oceans. In striking aerial images, he captures the massive scale of 21st-century agriculture that has sculpted 40 percent of the Earth’s surface. He explores the farming of staples like wheat and rice, the cultivation of vegetables and fruits, and aquaculture and meat production. He surveys traditional farming practices and vast international agribusinesses. And with the introduction provided by environmental journalist Joel K. Bourne Jr., Feed the Planet explains the challenge that lies head: sustainably producing food for a growing population—in the face of destabilizing climate change.
Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future, edited by Grist (Milkweed Editions 2024, 232 pages, $20.00 paperback)
Otherworldly but remarkably familiar, ancestral but firmly rooted in alternate futures, these twelve innovative stories—winners of the Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest—offer a glimpse of a future built on sustainability, inclusivity, and justice. A beekeeper collaborates on a bee-based warning system for floods. An Indian family preserves its traditions through the latest communication fads. And after an oceanic rapture, a lone survivor adapts to living in a tree on a small island with a vulture he befriends. Curated by Grist, the leading media organization dedicated to empowering stories of climate change, Metamorphosis is a visionary and speculative collection. Its stories illustrate how fiction can help us envision a tomorrow in which we thrive.
Playground: A Novel by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton 2024, 400 pages, $29.99)
Four people are drawn together in a panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory. They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the islanders must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away. Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize, and it interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
All Good Things Must Begin: Short Plays Imagining the Future, edited by Chantal Bilodeau (Arts & Climate Initiative 2024, pages, $22.95 paperback)
The climate crisis demands an imaginative leap: We can create a just and regenerative world only if we dare to conjure it and use our vision to guide us through the difficulties. So, let’s all be solarpunks and dream up radical futures where nature and community thrive. Let’s reject the apocalypse and embrace counterculture, post-capitalism, and decolonization. All Good Things Must Begin, edited by playwright and translator Chantal Bilodeau, features fifty playwrights from around the world who take up this existential challenge. They share their vision of what the future may hold with humor, poetry, playfulness, hope, courage, but also sometimes grief and pain.
Three bonus listings
60 Years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year: How Wildlife Photography Became an Art by Rosamund Kidman Cox (Smithsonian Books 2024, 336 pages, $50.00)
Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World by Peter Godfrey-Smith (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2024, 336 pages, $
A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World’s First National Park by Randall K. Wilson (Counterpoint Press 2024, 416 pages, $34.00)
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