Cool books for a hot summer » Yale Climate Connections

In May, we gave you a head start on your summer reading list with our bookshelf on the nine British novels that contended for the Climate Fiction Prize. (“And So I Roar” by Abi Dare took the prize.)

Now we have 12 more titles for you to consider: nine works of nonfiction and three new cli-fi novels.

This month’s bookshelf begins with a title that has already proved to be one of the biggest climate books of the year, “We Are Eating the Earth,” by Michael Grunwald. His run of webinars and podcast interviews is just getting started. Here it is matched with an analysis of the water crisis and a meditation on shelter. In all, these are three accounts of our most basic needs: food, water, and shelter.

The next three titles offer ruminations on the natural world – rivers, the “sea of grass” that covers the heartland, and the blue trails of New York – and the compounding impacts of climate change.

The steep prices too often paid by those who protect the natural world command our attention next. Two taut accounts of environmental injustice in greater Amazonia are followed by a children’s book on the first female smokejumper.

The three new cli-fi novels complete this month’s bookshelf, the last a work of crime fiction. It’s hard to imagine a better way to end a list of summer reading suggestions.

As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.

We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald (Simon & Schuster 2025, 384 pages, $29.99)

Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rain forest every six seconds. We are eating the earth. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling toward climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems. Bestselling author Michael Grunwald builds his narrative around unforgettable food and land expert Tim Searchinger, chronicling his uphill battles against bad science and bad politics. But through better policy, technology, and behavior, including a land ethic that values every acre, Grunwald shows how we could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations.

Thirst: The Global Quest to Solve the Water Crisis Filippo Menga (Verso Books 2025 (July), 208 pages, $24.95 paperback)

Two billion people worldwide are without access to safe water. But solutions are hard to come by when causes are not clearly defined. In a whirlwind tour of global water insecurity, one of the world’s leading experts on water politics chronicles the massive impact of climate change; insatiable water demands from industry and agriculture; and widespread lack of state investment in infrastructure. Menga focuses in particular on high priests of global developmentalism – celebrities and CEOs – who have emerged as some of the loudest voices about water issues while offering few tangible solutions. Thirst shows that if humanity is to escape the deadlock that bedevils access to clean water, it has to reconsider both its faith in the market and its relationship with nature.

Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless by Tamara Dean (University of Minnesota Press 2025, 224 pages, $19.95 paperback)

In the midst of our environmental crises, Tamara Dean sought a way to live lightly on the planet. Her quest drew her to a landscape unlike any other: the Driftless area of Wisconsin, marked by steep hills and deeply carved valleys, capped with forests and laced with cold, spring-fed streams. There, she confronted, in ways large and small, the challenges of meeting basic needs while facing the ravages of climate change – an experience at once soul-stirring and practical that she recounts in Shelter and Storm. Keenly attentive to the stakes for our planet’s future – and the implications of extreme weather, shifting agricultural practices, and political divides – Dean reveals a way forward for anyone seeking a more sustainable way to live in a changing climate.

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (W.W. Norton 2025, 384 pages, $31.99)

Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada―imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Powered by dazzling prose and lit by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers―and always has.

Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie by Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty (Random House 2025, 400 pages, $32.00)

The North American prairie is an ecological marvel, a lush carpet of grass that is home to some of the nation’s most iconic creatures. One of the richest ecosystems on Earth, it is also a massive carbon sink. Then the steel plow, artificial drainage, and fertilizers converted the prairie into some of the world’s most productive farmland – but at a terrible cost: the forced dislocation of Indigenous peoples, pollution of great rivers, and catastrophic loss of wildlife. Veteran journalists and midwesterners Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty offer a deep, compassionate analysis of the difficulties and opportunities facing agricultural and Indigenous communities. Vividly, Sea of makes clear why the future of this region is of essential concern far beyond the heartland.

Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage by Dan Rubinstein (ECW Press 2025 (June), 336 pages, $22.95 paperback)

In June 2023, writer Dan Rubinstein lashed camping gear to his stand-up paddleboard and embarked on an improbable solo voyage from Ottawa to Montreal, New York City, Toronto, and back to Ottawa along the rivers, lakes, and canals of a landlocked region. Over 1,200 miles and 10 weeks, he explored the healing potential of “blue space” – the aquatic equivalent of green space. Blue spaces, he discovered, are also a way to connect with the cross-section of people he met and the diverse geographies and communities he passed through. Weaving together research, interviews, and a malodorous, adventure tale, Water Borne shows us that we don’t need an epic journey to find solutions to so many modern challenges. Repair and renewal may be close at hand: Just add water.

Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise Climate Justice by Abby Reyes (North Atlantic Books 2025 (May), 296 pages, $20)

Abby Reyes’s partner Terence Unity Freitas, along with two companions, had traveled to the Indigenous U’wa territory in Colombia to listen to the needs of a community imperiled by multinational oil interests. But then they disappeared. Days later, their bodies were found, bound and bullet-riddled in a field across the border in Venezuela.
Twenty years later, Abby found herself in Case 1 of Colombia’s truth and recognition process. They want to know her stories, her questions, her truth demands. Plunged back into grief, Abby is called to navigate the past. Spanning three decades and three continents, Truth Demands charts Abby’s parallel journeys as she navigates the waters of loss and impermanence while fighting for truth and accountability from big oil. A haunting memoir, Truth Demands shows us how to hold fast even as we let go.

How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist’s Fatal Quest for Answers by Dom Phillips with contributors (Chelsea Green 2025 (June), 304 pages, $27.95)

During the dark days of the Bolsonaro administration, British journalist Dom Phillips set out with his Indigenous guide to answer a crucial question: How can we save the Amazon? Dom connected with politicians, farmers, and Indigenous activists to study the costs of deforestation and environmental degradation and benefits of solutions like agroforestry, tourism, and the bioeconomy. But then Dom and his guide were brutally murdered. Unwilling to see her late husband’s work be for naught, Dom’s widow, Ale, assembled a team of experts, journalists, and activists to complete his work, with each interpreting his field notes for an unfinished chapter. How to Save the Amazon is a book both by and about Dom Phillips, his quest for answers, and his search for hope.

Ablaze: The Story of America’s First Female Smokejumper by Jessica Lawler, illustrated by Sarah Gonzales (Viking Books for Young Readers 2025, 40 pages, $18.99)

Deanne loved being outdoors. With her family, she spent summers sailing the Salton Sea and backpacking the Sierra Nevada Mountains. As she grew older, her love of nature only grew. So when the heat rose each fire season and the blazes burned near and far, Deanne knew she had to do her part. She spent years on woodland crews, clearing brush and branches, and on Hotshot crews where she fought faster fires and took bigger risks. But Deanne really wanted to be a smokejumper, to jump from planes and parachute into dangerous wildfires that no truck could ever reach. The only problem? There had never been a female smokejumper before. Ablaze illustrates how Deanne Shulman fought unfair rules and cleared a space for women in firefighting.

Wild Dark Shore: A Novel by Charlotte McConaghy (Flatiron Books 2025, 320 pages, $28.99)

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Then, during a terrifying storm, a woman washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, they feel that she might just be what they need. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. A novel of breathtaking twists, Wild Dark Shore is about the painful choices we must make as the world around us disappears.

The Unmapping: A Novel by Denise Robbins (Bindery Books 2025, 408 pages, $18.95 paperback)

There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero they need. The fight to hold the city together will mean tackling questions they were too afraid to ask. With themes of climate change and political unrest, Unmapping is a captivating debut.

We Can’t Save You: A Tale of Politics, Murder, and Maine: A Ryan Tapia Novel by Thomas E Ricks (Pegasus Crime 2025, 304 pages, $ 27.95

When a group of young Native Americans launches a series of protests against climate change and its effects on the waters and woods of Maine, veteran FBI agent Ryan Tapia is assigned to monitor the movement. The protesters, who become determined to split away from American society, are led by “Peeled Paul” Soco, a Malpense hermit who played a key role in one of Tapia’s previous investigations. When the marchers begin making camps on the lawns of luxurious summer mansions along the Maine coast, they win national media attention – and the wrath of a reactionary president. Tapia soon finds himself torn. With its dizzying detours and wind-whipped climax, We Can’t Save You establishes Ryan Tapia as a compelling character in crime fiction.