Happy new year everyone, and welcome to A Quill of Conservation, my experiment in self-guided conservation studies!
As you may have guessed, I’m a bona-fide bibliophile. Though a bit antiquated, I still firmly believe that the best way to acquaint yourself with a new subject is through a tall stack of well-chosen books. I’ve drawn the bulk of my curriculum from this Reading List published by Tompkins Conservation, an organization founded by outdoor enthusiasts and business powerhouses, Doug and Kris Tompkins, and complied most of the marine science from various episodes of the Speak Up for Blue podcast, which I would highly recommend subscribing to if you’re looking to stay up-to-date in marine science and conservation.
I’ll be returning to this post to add titles and make changes as my project progresses, but without further ado, here’s the list:
- Ocean Country: One Woman’s Voyage from Peril to Hope in her Quest to Save the Seas, Liz Cunningham
- Ocean of Life, Callum Roberts
- Blue Hope: Exploring and Caring for Earth’s Magnificent Ocean, Sylvia A. Earle
- Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans, Sylvia A. Earle
- The World is Blue: How out fate and the Ocean’s are One, Sylvia A. Earle
- Edge of the Sea, Rachael Carson
- Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do, Wallace J. Nichols
- The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, John Michael Greer
- In The Absence of the Sacred: the Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, Jerry Mander
- The Only World We’ve Got: A Paul Shepard Reader, Paul Shepard
- Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich
- Geography of Nowhere: the Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, James Howard Kunstler
- The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry
- Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, George Monboit
- Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson
- Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity, Reed F. Noss and Allen Cooperrider
- Wildlife in America, Peter Matthiessen
- Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century, Dave Foreman
- Wild Earth: Wild Ideas for a World Out of Balance, Tom Butler
- A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir
- Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, Donald Worster
- National Parks: the American Experience, Alfred Runte
- Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Frazier Nash and Char Miller
- American Environmental History: An Introduction, Carolyn Merchant
- American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy, Stephen Fox
- Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered, Bill Devall and George Sessions
- On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, Charles Darwin
- Humans as Components of Ecosystems, Mark McDonnell and Steward Pickett
- Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication, John A. Livingston
- The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Douglas Brinkley
- In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall
- The Responsible Company: What We’ve Learned from Patagonia’s First 40 Years, Yvonne Chouinard and Vincent Stanley
Realistically speaking, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to finish the entire list by the end of 2018, but that’s no reason to shy away from the challenge. If you have any recommendations or refinements, please let me know in the comments section below.
Wish me luck!
A Quill of Conservation 