Books like The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

01

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Naomi Klein · History

Naomi Klein's central argument is that the climate crisis cannot be solved within the existing economic framework.

Both dig into climate change.

02

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert · Science

The Sixth Extinction is Elizabeth Kolbert's account of the mass extinction event currently underway — the sixth in Earth's history, and the first caused by a single species.

Shares climate change and extinction with The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.

03

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson · Science

Silent Spring, published in 1962, is Rachel Carson's investigation of the effects of synthetic pesticides — particularly DDT and related organochlorines — on birds, fish, insects, and the broader ecological web.

A kindred science read.

04

The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World

Amanda Little · Science

The Fate of Food is Amanda Little's reporting on how food production is being reshaped by climate change and by the technologies that farmers, scientists, and food companies are deploying to respond.

Both dig into climate change.

05

Enlightenment Now

Steven Pinker · Science

Enlightenment Now is Steven Pinker's argument that the ideals of the Enlightenment — reason, science, humanism, and progress — have been responsible for a dramatic and continuing improvement in human wellbeing across virtually every measurable dimension, and that these ideals are under threat from counter-Enlightenment movements on both the left and the right.

A kindred science read.

06

A World Without Ice

Henry Pollack · Science

Henry Pollack is a geophysicist at the University of Michigan who spent decades studying the Earth's heat flow and was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Both dig into climate change.

07

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Bill Gates · Science

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is Bill Gates's attempt to explain the scale of the climate problem and outline what it would actually take to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Both dig into climate change.

08

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction

David Quammen · Science

The Song of the Dodo is David Quammen's magnum opus on island biogeography — the science of how species are distributed across isolated habitats and why islands, both literal and metaphorical, are where extinction concentrates.

Both dig into extinction.

09

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

Jeff Goodell · Science

Jeff Goodell spent years traveling to the places most threatened by rising seas — Miami, Rotterdam, Lagos, Dhaka, Venice, the Marshall Islands — and The Water Will Come is the result of that reporting.

Both dig into climate change.

10

Whole Earth Discipline

Stewart Brand · Science

Whole Earth Discipline is Stewart Brand's argument that the environmental movement needs to update its orthodoxies in light of climate change and the actual evidence on the technologies it has historically opposed.

Both dig into climate change.

11

A Promised Land

Barack Obama · Memoir

A Promised Land is the first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his 2008 campaign through the first two and a half years of his presidency, ending with the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Both dig into politics.

12

America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve

Roger Lowenstein · History

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913, but the story of how it came into existence spans three decades and involves a level of political resistance, financial panic, and legislative maneuvering that makes the eventual outcome seem unlikely in retrospect.

Both dig into politics.