Books by Bill McKibben
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024
Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year.
A collection of the best science and nature articles published in 2023, selected by guest editor Bill McKibben and series editor Jaime Green.
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Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way.
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Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
'Read it please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next nothing could be more important.' �Barbara KingsolverTwenty years ago with The End of Nature Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now he insists we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting drying acidifying flooding and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created in very short order a new planet still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth.That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend�think of the money that went to repair New Orleans or the trillions it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we've manag
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Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
“We've got a long history of resistance in Vermont and this book is testimony to that fact.”
–Bernie Sanders
A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic.
As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law.
In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that's become more popular than ever--seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of 'Ethan Allen Day' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.
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Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance
“We've got a long history of resistance in Vermont and this book is testimony to that fact.”
–Bernie Sanders
A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic.
As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law.
In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that's become more popular than ever--seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of 'Ethan Allen Day' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.
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The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life
Powerful, impassioned essays on living and being in the world, from the bestselling author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy
For a generation, Bill McKibben has been among America's most impassioned and beloved writers on our relationship to our world and our environment. His groundbreaking book on climate change, The End of Nature, is considered "as important as Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring"* and Deep Economy, his "deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding"** exploration of globalization, helped awaken and fuel a movement to restore local economies.
Now, for the first time, the best of McKibben's essays―fiery, magical, and infused with his uniquely soulful investigations of modern life―are collected in a single volume, The Bill McKibben Reader. Whether meditating on today's golden age in radio, the natural place of biting black flies in our lives, or the patriotism of a grandmother fighting to get corporate money out of politics, McKibben inspires us to become better caretakers of the Earth―and of one another.
*The Plain Dealer (Cleveland )
**Michael Pollan
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Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist
Bestselling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben recounts the personal and global story of the fight to build and preserve a sustainable planet
Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find handcuffed and behind bars, but that's where he found himself in the summer of 2011 after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years, protesting the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House.
With the Arctic melting, the Midwest in drought, and Irene scouring the Atlantic, McKibben recognized that action was needed if solutions were to be found. Some of those would come at the local level, where McKibben joins forces with a Vermont beekeeper raising his hives as part of the growing trend toward local food. Other solutions would come from a much larger fight against the fossil-fuel industry as a whole.
Oil and Honey is McKibben's account of these two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight―from the center of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small-scale local answers to climate change. With empathy and passion he makes the case for a renewed commitment on both levels of the fight to stop global warming, telling the story of raising one year's honey crop and building a social movement that's still cresting.
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Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist
Bestselling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben recounts the personal and global story of the fight to build and preserve a sustainable planet
Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find handcuffed and behind bars, but that's where he found himself in the summer of 2011 after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years, protesting the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House.
With the Arctic melting, the Midwest in drought, and Irene scouring the Atlantic, McKibben recognized that action was needed if solutions were to be found. Some of those would come at the local level, where McKibben joins forces with a Vermont beekeeper raising his hives as part of the growing trend toward local food. Other solutions would come from a much larger fight against the fossil-fuel industry as a whole.
Oil and Honey is McKibben's account of these two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight―from the center of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small-scale local answers to climate change. With empathy and passion he makes the case for a renewed commitment on both levels of the fight to stop global warming, telling the story of raising one year's honey crop and building a social movement that's still cresting.
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Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
The bestselling author of The End of Nature issues an impassioned call to arms for an economy that creates community and ennobles our lives
In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, "more" is no longer synonymous with "better"―indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites. McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value.
McKibben's animating idea is that we need to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. He shows this concept blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems; for those who wonder if there isn't something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to think about one's life as an individual and as a member of a larger community.
McKibben offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future. Deep Economy makes the compelling case that the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.
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Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community
Bestselling author Bill McKibben turns activist in the first hands-on guidebook to stopping climate change, the world's greatest threat
Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government's report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars―combined. Bill McKibben, the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature, warns that it's no longer time to debate global warming, it's time to fight it.
Drawing on the experience of Step It Up, a national day of rallies held on April 14, McKibben and the Step It Up team of organizers provide the facts of what must change to save the climate and show how to build the fight in your community, church, or college. They describe how to launch online grassroots campaigns, generate persuasive political pressure, plan high-profile events that will draw media attention, and other effective actions. Fight Global Warming Now offers an essential blueprint for a mighty new movement against the most urgent challenge facing us today.
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The Age of Missing Information
“Highly personal and original . . . McKibben goes beyond Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the medium is the message.”
——The New York Times
Imagine watching an entire day’s worth of television on every single channel. Acclaimed environmental writer and culture critic Bill McKibben subjected himself to this sensory overload in an experiment to verify whether we are truly better informed than previous generations. Bombarded with newscasts and fluff pieces, game shows and talk shows, ads and infomercials, televangelist pleas and Brady Bunch episodes, McKibben processed twenty-four hours of programming on all ninety-three Fairfax, Virginia, cable stations. Then, as a counterpoint, he spent a day atop a quiet and remote mountain in the Adirondacks, exploring the unmediated man and making small yet vital discoveries about himself and the world around him. As relevant now as it was when originally written in 1992–and with new material from the author on the impact of the Internet age–this witty and astute book is certain to change the way you look at television and perceive media as a whole.
“By turns humorous, wise, and troubling . . . a penetrating critique of technological society.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Masterful . . . a unique, bizarre portrait of our life and times.”
–Los Angeles Times
“Do yourself a favor: Put down the remote and pick up this book.”
–Houston Chronicle
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The End of Nature
Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth.
This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement.
More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
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Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out.
Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience.
Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.
Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.
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Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out.
Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience.
Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.
Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.
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Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon
One of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022
Bill McKibben―award-winning author, activist, educator―is fiercely curious.
“I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.”
Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing―knowing―that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth.
But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.
And he is curious: What the hell happened?
In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth―The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon―could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.
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The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened
One of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022
Bill McKibben―award-winning author, activist, educator―is fiercely curious.
“I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.”
Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing―knowing―that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth.
But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.
And he is curious: What the hell happened?
In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth―The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon―could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.
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Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization
None
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Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization
None
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The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation
In The Comforting Whirlwind, acclaimed environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben turns to the biblical book of Job and its awesome depiction of creation to demonstrate our need to embrace a bold new paradigm for living if we hope to reverse the current trend of ecological destruction.
With reference to the consequences of our poorly considered and self-centered environmental practices―global warming, ozone degradation, deforestation―McKibben combines modern science and timeless biblical wisdom to make the case that growth and economic progress are not only undesirable but deadly. If we continue to accelerate the pace of development, we will inevitably complete the “decreation” of our planet and everything on it, including ourselves.
In his signature lyrical prose, and using Stephen Mitchell’s powerful translation of Job, McKibben calls readers to truly appreciate both the majesty of creation and humanity’s rightful―and responsible―place in it.
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Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth (The World As Home)
Bill McKibben’s first book, the bestselling The End of Nature, offered a devastating portrait of the harm human civilization has done to the planet. Hope, Human and Wild sets out on a dramatically different journey to provide examples and hope for a sustainable future, one in which our society’s wealth is measured less by its material productivity and more by its spiritual richness; less by its consumption of resources and more by the extent to which we live in harmony with the natural world.
From the Adirondack Mountains to Kerala, India, to Curitiba, Brazil, McKibben offers clear-eyed and profoundly compelling portraits of places where resourceful people have confronted modern problems with inventive solutions, and thrived in the process.
With an afterword by the author updating developments over the decade since the book was first published, this edition provides a badly needed vision of optimism for the future of our planet.
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American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (LOA #182) (Library of America)
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, provocative, and timely anthology, gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries.
Classics of the environmental imagination?the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold?s A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson?s Silent Spring?are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America?s greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of ?nature? join ecologists? memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.
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Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously
A new edition of a classic book about what it takes to be a world-class athlete and where the true meaning of endurance can be found.
At 37, the celebrated writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben took a break from the life of the mind to put himself to the ultimate test: devoting a year to train as a competitive cross-country skier. Consulting with personal trainers, coaches, and doctors at the US Olympic Center, he followed the rigorous training regimen of a world-class athlete.
Along the way, he learned to cope with his physical limitations and, when his father was diagnosed with a life-threatening brain tumor, discovered something about the real meaning of endurance.
Told with his trademark intelligence, humor, and honesty, Long Distance is an insightful examination of the culture and mind-set of endurance athletes, and a moving and inspiring meditation on finding balance in our often harried lives.
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David Benjamin Sherry: American Monuments
by Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben
A vivid portrait of the assault on America's parks and forests
David Benjamin Sherry: American Monuments is a landscape photography project that captures the spirit and intrinsic value of America’s threatened system of national monuments. In April 2017 an executive order called for the review of the 27 national monuments created since January 1996. In December 2017 the final report called on the president to shrink four national monuments and change the management of six others, recommending that areas in Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans be offered for sale, specifically for oil drilling and coal and uranium mining. American Monuments focuses on the areas under review, with special emphasis on those that have already been decimated. Sherry documents these pristine, sacred and wildly diverse areas using the traditional, historic 8x10" large format. The resulting 31 photographs―all tipped in to the book by hand―not only convey the beauty of these important and ecologically diverse sites, but also shed light upon the plight of the perennially exploited landscape of the American West.
American photographer David Benjamin Sherry (born 1981) specializes in large-format film photography made with meticulous attention to analog photographic processes. Sherry’s use of vibrant monochrome color began while studying for his MFA at Yale. Working closely with master printer and photographer Richard Benson, Sherry discovered that, through analog printing techniques, he could manipulate color film to chromatic extremes. For Sherry, the vibrant colors he incorporates into the work are a conduit for his intense, sometimes mystical connections to the natural world and reflect his own queer experience of traversing the American West.
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The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing About Climate Change
Van Jones, Al Gore, Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, and other essential voices on global warming, from its 19th-century discovery to the present, in a volume edited by Bill McKibben, our most widely respected environmental writer
With the rise of extreme weather events worldwide--witness the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Sandy, Irene, and Katrina, and the sustained drought across the American West--global warming has become increasingly difficult to deny.
What is happening to our planet? And what can we do about it? The Global Warming Reader provides more than thirty-five answers to these burning questions, from more than one hundred years of engagement with the topic. Here is Elizabeth Kolbert's groundbreaking essay "The Darkening Sea," Michael Crichton's skeptical view of climate change, George Monbiot's biting indictment of those who are really using up the planet's resources, NASA scientist James Hansen's testimony before the U.S. Congress, and clarion calls for action by Al Gore, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Van Jones, and many others. The Global Warming Reader is a comprehensive resource, expertly edited by someone who lives and breathes this defining issue of our time.
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Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landsca
"[McKibben is] a marvelous writer who has thought deeply about the environment, loves this part of the country, and knows how to be a first-class traveling companion."―Entertainment Weekly
In Wandering Home, one of his most personal books, Bill McKibben invites readers to join him on a hike from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks. Here he reveals that the motivation for his impassioned environmental activism is not high-minded or abstract, but as tangible as the lakes and forests he explored in his twenties, the same woods where he lives with his family today.
Over the course of his journey McKibben meets with old friends and kindred spirits, including activists, writers, organic farmers, a vintner, a beekeeper, and environmental studies students, all in touch with nature and committed to its preservation. For McKibben, there is no better place than these woods to work out a balance between the wild and the cultivated, the individual and the global community, and to discover the answers to the challenges facing our planet today.
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