Tidepool's Top Five List of Environmental Books
(personal opinion this is just a list of book recs)
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmer This book expertly blends indigenous knowledge and Western scientific methods. Highly emphasizes precocity and living with the environment instead of separating ourselves further as many Western green movements would have you believe. This book also has realistic strategies for dealing with the climate crisis other than just personal choice.
Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane Goodall Amazing conservation wins from animals that have been brought back from the brink of extinction by zoos and aquariums. Stories like the California condor and the black-footed ferret are featured prominently. This book gave me hope that there may be a solution to saving species from extinction.
We Are All Whalers by Michael Moore Focuses on threats the northern right whale and other whales face out in the ocean and the connection we all have to it as consumers. This book does not shame consumers for their choices though, but rather calls for systematic changes in the fishing and plastic industry. One of the four books that made me cry while I was reading it.
Fresh Banana Leaves by Dr. Jessica Hernandez Amazing criticisms focusing on the Western Conservation Movement and the role of displacement in the environmental movement. The editing could be a bit better, but the message that indigenous knowledge should be centered in the environmentalist movement is impact.
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gums: This book is the second in the "Emergent Strategies" anthology. While all the books are amazing this one is my favorite. The book focuses on the shared relationship between white-western colonialism and the current ways we are affecting the marine environment. She gets a few scientific facts wrong regarding marine biology, but this book is so beautifully poetic I'm willing to over look it.
