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Notes from Deep Time: A Journey Through Our Past and Future Worlds | Helen Gordon

The story of the Earth is written into our landscape: it’s there in the curves of hills, the colours of stone, surprising eruptions of vegetation.

Wanting a fresh perspective on her own life, the writer Helen Gordon set out to read that epic narrative. Her odyssey takes her from the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from a state-of-the-art earthquake monitoring system in California to one of the world’s most dangerous volcanic complexes in Naples.

At every step, she finds that the apparently solid ground beneath our feet isn’t quite as it seems.

‘A terrific book, especially clarifying on the Anthropocene in context. I loved the especially eye-opening last chapter on the deep future, on the disposal of nuclear waste and the human failing to think and plan beyond the individual lifespan. Sobering and instructive time travel.’ ~ Max Porter, guest contributor to March 2022’s Hot Reads

 

Read more of Max’s recommendations in March 2022’s Rebel Library Hot Reads

Purchase The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman from Hive Books

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Living With Trees | Robin Walter

Trees and woods offer great potential for rebuilding our wider relationship with nature, reinforcing local identity and sustaining wildlife.

‘I’d really like to ask some kindly philanthropist to buy a copy of this book for every household in the UK. Very important, beautifully produced, a bible of Common Ground’s research and ongoing progressive intent as regards wood, forestry, biodiversity and trees as community in this country.’ ~ Max Porter, guest contributor to March 2022’s Rebel Library Hot Reads

We need more trees and woods in our lives, to lock up carbon, to mitigate flooding, to help shade our towns and cities and bring shelter, wildlife and beauty to places.

Living with Trees is a cornucopia of practical information, good examples and new ideas that will inspire, guide and encourage people to reconnect with the trees and woods in their community, so we can all discover how to value, celebrate and protect our arboreal neighbours.

 

Read more of Max’s recommendations in March 2022’s Rebel Library Hot Reads

Purchase Living With Trees at Hive Books

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The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman | Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert

The Falling Sky is a remarkable first-person account of the life story and cosmo-ecological thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon.

‘A revelatory and passionate cosmo-ecological life story. He is a really extraordinary human, and this book is a more truthful account of environmental devastation than many of our more compromised attempts here in the ‘merchandise’ societies. It’s a book like no other.’ ~ Max Porter, guest contributor to March 2022’s Hot Reads

Representing a people whose very existence is in jeopardy, Davi Kopenawa paints an unforgettable picture of Yanomami culture, past and present, in the heart of the rainforest–a world where ancient indigenous knowledge and shamanic traditions cope with the global geopolitics of an insatiable natural resources extraction industry. In richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation and experience as a shaman, as well as his first encounters with outsiders: government officials, missionaries, road workers, cattle ranchers, and gold prospectors.

He vividly describes the ensuing cultural repression, environmental devastation, and deaths resulting from epidemics and violence.

To counter these threats, Davi Kopenawa became a global ambassador for his endangered people.

The Falling Sky follows him from his native village in the Northern Amazon to Brazilian cities and finally on transatlantic flights bound for European and American capitals.

These travels constitute a shamanic critique of Western industrial society, whose endless material greed, mass violence, and ecological blindness contrast sharply with Yanomami cultural values. Bruce Albert, a close friend since the 1970s, superbly captures Kopenawa’s intense, poetic voice.

This collaborative work provides a unique reading experience that is at the same time a coming-of-age story, a historical account, and a shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest.

 

Read more of Max’s recommendations in March 2022’s Rebel Library Hot Reads

Purchase The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman from Hive Books