Tag Archive for: portrait

Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse | Dave Goulson

Dave Goulson is passionate about insects. One of his earliest memories is finding a stripey yellow and black caterpillar feeding on weeds at the edge of the school playground. His passion turned into a career, and in Silent Earth, Goulson draws on a lifetime of study and the latest ground-breaking research. He reveals the shocking decline of insect populations with eye-watering statistics – ‘41% of insect species threatened with extinction’ – and details the potentially catastrophic consequences of their demise.

This thoughtful and enjoyable book is part love letter to the insect world, part elegy, part rousing manifesto for a greener planet, and while we may feel helpless in the face of ecological breakdown, Goulson shows us how we can all take simple steps to encourage insects and counter their destruction. – Sandy Winterbottom

Avocado Anxiety: and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From | Louise Gray

In Avocado Anxiety, Louise Gray takes us on a deeply personal journey from the accusative supermarket aisles – ‘proper mothers cook for their children’ – back to her family roots in a vibrant Edinburgh greengrocers. At a time when we have become so thoroughly divorced from the food that sustains us and its impact on the planet, Gray digs the dirt on organic potatoes, greenhouse tomatoes and the surprising delights of UK-grown fava beans. Each chapter answers a question about a familiar item in our shopping basket. Is plant protein as good as meat? Is foraged food more nutritious? Could bees be the answer to using fewer chemicals?

‘When I write about fruit and vegetables,’ Gray tells us, ‘I am really writing about an effort to be a better person, to leave a lighter footprint on the world.’ This colour-filled and engaging book is a must for everyone who loves food, and loves the planet. – Sandy Winterbottom

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The Two-Headed Whale | Sandy Winterbottom

In 2016, Sandy Winterbottom embarked on an epic tall-ship voyage from the busy port of Montevideo to the emptiness of the Antarctic Peninsula. Through vivid and vital descriptions we follow her journey across the vast southern oceans, sensing the ‘feeling of lightness as the ship falls away into the trough of a wave’ and the ‘toothpaste-fresh’ hue of the sea. But sailing alongside her is the shadow of Anthony Ford, a 15 year old from Edinburgh, whose grave Winterbottom encounters on the tiny island of South Georgia, leading to an obsession that diverts her adventure into the brutal world of industrial-scale whaling. The two stories culminate in the unlikely true-life tale of a vegan who ends up befriending the men who partook in the slaughter of two million whales.

In a world that seems increasingly divided, The Two-Headed Whale reminds us of our common humanity and resurrects a history of environmental exploitation that holds crucial parallels with the modern day climate emergency.

Saga of the Swamp Thing | Alan Moore

For years, when people asked me why I bothered reading comics, I would point them in the direction of Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing. Not only is it a beautifully illustrated and powerfully written work of counterculture storytelling, it’s also a testament to the true potential of the graphic novel medium. For many people ­– myself included – this comic came with a moment of awakening, in the style of: ‘Whoa, I had no idea comics could do that’.

A brief synopsis. Our hero is Swamp Thing, an elemental representative of ‘the green’ – the hive mind of all plant life on Earth. In Moore’s editions, Swamp Thing takes the human form of Alec Holland, a plant scientist who suffers a terrible tragedy and goes on a series of spine-tingling, occasionally psychedelic and deeply moving adventures, mostly set in a swamp. The stories are characterised for being highly philosophical and politically challenging, very much in line with the rest of Moore’s oeuvre, such as ‘Watchman’ and ‘V for Vendetta’.

I recommend The Saga of Swamp Thing to anyone yearning for a modern-age Green Man to come and protect our wild world using only the power of vines and roots, weeds and blooms. – Philip Webb Gregg

ENTANGLED LIFE | MERLIN SHELDRAKE

Neither animal, plant or mineral, fungi are the mysterious underpinning of our world — almost literally so, because 90% of plants depend on fungi and their mycelial networks in order to grow. Sheldrake’s gorgeously-written account teems with mind-altering and perspective-shifting facts. Who knew that the world’s largest living organism is a gigantic fungus that lives underground in Oregon, or that fungi can eat up oil spills and enrich soil for farmers?  But while Sheldrake celebrates the regenerative and restorative properties of fungi, perhaps their most fascinating application is their ability to alter our cognition — and even ourselves.

“These organisms make questions of our categories, and thinking about them makes the world look different,” he writes. The decentralised organisational system of fungi’s mycelial networks is one of humming, constant aliveness, he argues, begging the question: is it really possible to be an individual in ecology? Sheldrake believes that fungi offer us a radical re-understanding of the world —  including new imaginings of embodied interconnectedness. His enthralling and beautifully woven book provides a fresh and inspiring perspective on fungi that will captivate lay readers, and reinvigorate any ecological activist.

  • Cailey Rizzo

THE FUTURE | NAOMI ALDERMAN

The future that Alderman conjures in her ambitious, exuberant follow-up to The Power is all too close to our own. Unchecked corporate greed dominates the political and cultural landscape; the Sixth Mass Extinction is in full swing; and AI, social media and new gadgets are transforming the way we live, communicate and think.

Against this backdrop, a collection of billionaires, paranoiacs, and idealists including a former cult member and a survivalist influencer co-operate and compete to shape the future of their dreams. With the continuation of much of life on Earth at stake, Alderman’s timely, intelligent thriller is tempered with anthropological, philosophical and religious commentaries which deftly frame the action in the context of entrenched cultural history, the biodiversity crisis, and Deep Time. – Liz Jensen

NOMAD CENTURY | GAIA VINCE

With every degree of temperature rise, a billion people will be displaced from the habitable zones in which they have lived for many thousands of years. With drought, heat, wildfires and flooding reshaping Earth’s human geography, Gaia Vince explores how we can best manage mass-scale climate migration and restore the planet to a fully habitable state. Emphasising that migration is not the problem, but the solution, Vince illustrates how migration brings benefits not only to migrants but also to host countries, many of which face demographic crises and labour shortages.

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WILDING | ISABELLA TREE

“I recommend anyone prone to despair to read Wilding – for Isabella Tree’s apparently quixotic tale of Exmoor ponies, longhorn cattle, red deer and Tamworth pigs roaming free on an aristocratic estate is a hugely important addition to the literature of what can be done to restore soil and soul. The book describes an attempt to renew the ecosystem, after decades of intensive agriculture of some 1,400 hectares owned by Tree’s husband Charlie Burrell at Knepp in West Sussex. The project, which began in 2001, is perhaps unique in England, and the results have been spectacular. Tree is a trenchant critic of the intensive agriculture that has led to soil degradation and erosion. She questions the goal-driven frameworks of much conservation work: when there is no preferred end state, formerly rare and even vanished species tend suddenly to reappear. And she battles heroically against the English addiction to tidiness. For a nation obsessed with orderliness and boundaries, land that is endlessly morphing, on its way to being something else, can be discomforting. She also makes the case that it is possible to feed 10 billion humans on this planet while also leaving more space for the wild.” – Caspar Henderson

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BIRD GIRL | MAYA-ROSE CRAIG

 

“In deciding to write a personal memoir at the age of 20, the ornithologist and activist Mya-Rose Craig has shown considerable courage. Not only has she travelled the length and breadth of Britain, she has visited every continent on Earth, rising at dawn, sleeping on ice, walking up mountains and baking in deserts in order to view over 5,000 different birds. Throughout the book, her passion for these animals takes centre stage, and leads her to an environmental activism that feels both necessary and urgent.” – Natasha Walter

Even If Everything Ends | Jens Liljestrand

Raging wildfires sweep through the Swedish countryside – turning holidaymakers into climate refugees. And yet, against this hellscape, life goes on. Marriages collapse; teenagers fall in love; parents succumb to midlife crises; children rebel.

As society starts to crumble, the fates of four very different characters intertwine. Didrik, a father of three and media consultant, finds that his misguided efforts to be the hero that saves his family only make things worse. Melissa, a climate change denying influencer, is determined to live for the moment, despite it all. Andre, the bitter teenage son of an international sports star, uses the erupting violence to orchestrate his own personal revenge. And Vilja, a once self-absorbed teenage girl steps up in the face of all this adult ineptitude, to organise and resist. This novel asks us to face up to one question: how will you decide to live, even if everything ends?