Staff Picks

This book is not hopeful, but if you want to know how deep we are into the Anthropocene, read it. While it is generally acknowledged that the same thinking that created a problem will not be the thinking to solve it, sadly, it seems, that the major solutions to the climate crisis that are contemplated, researched, and funded are coming from the same thinking that got us here. Kolbert's book is a devastating counter-point to All We Can Save, but one that shows just how needed other voices, values, and people are at the forefront of decision-making about the future of our planet, which is to say, of ourselves.

 

Publisher's Description:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity's transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? That man should have dominion "over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it's said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in order to reflect sunlight back to space and cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face".

Following Paul Atreides and his family as they move to the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is a Greek tragedy set in space. It is on Arrakis that Paul will confront his destiny and how it will shape humanity's future. Herbert incorporates themes of environmentalism, religion, and politics into what is widely considered to be one of the best sci-fi novels ever written. Readers who are excited for the Dune movie coming out later this year should definitely read the novel where it all began.

 

Publisher description:

Science fiction's supreme masterpiece, Dune will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, it is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who will become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. Paul's noble family is named stewards of Arrakis, whose sands are the only source of a powerful drug called "the spice." After his family is brought down in a traitorous plot, Paul must go undercover to seek revenge, and to bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction