Earth Day
Every April, we honor our planet on Earth Day with a selection of works celebrating the natural world. With titles ranging from stories of wilderness survival to nonfiction works about conservation and sustainability, this Collection features a broad spectrum of ideas regarding nature and our role within it.
Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action is a 1995 nonfiction account of the legal case Anderson v. Cryovac, which disputed whether water contamination was the cause of leukemia in the defendant’s child and other members of the community. The case was between several families in Woburn, Massachusetts, and two corporations, Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace. Harr is an American writer and journalist. A Civil Action was his first book, followed by Funeral Wars (2001) and The... Read A Civil Action Summary
Affluenza seeks to diagnose and treat the disease of overconsumption that its three authors, John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor, believe to be a serious threat to both the human species and the rest of the planet. Accordingly, the book is divided into three main parts: a discussion of the symptoms of affluenza, an analysis of its causes, and suggestions for some possible cures.In Part 1, the authors offer a broad overview... Read Affluenza Summary
A Girl Named Disaster (1996) is a novel by Nancy Farmer. At the start of the novel, 11-year-old Nhamo lives in her remote Mozambique village with her late mother’s family. When the local doctor, or muvuki, decides that Nhamo is to blame for her family’s recent misfortune, her aunt and uncle decide to marry her off in an arranged marriage. Desperate to avoid this fate, Nhamo flees the village and sets out in a boat... Read A Girl Named Disaster Summary
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (2017) is a nonfiction book written by Raj Patel, a political economist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, also known for Stuffed and Starved (2007), and Jason W. Moore, an environmental historian and associate professor at Binghamton University. The authors’ expertise in political economy and environmental history provides a unique perspective on... Read A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things Summary
First published in 2006, Alabama Moon by Watt Key is a realistic middle grade novel set in 1980 in rural Alabama. After being raised by his survivalist father, 10-year-old Moon Blake knows he can acquire anything he needs from the forest. When his father dies, Moon sets out for Alaska as Pap instructed. On his journey, Moon finds conflict with authorities, peers, “the system,” and a constable intent on breaking his spirit. Alabama Moon was... Read Alabama Moon Summary
“All Summer in a Day” is a short story by American speculative fiction writer Ray Bradbury. It first appeared in a 1954 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and has since been anthologized numerous times and even adapted as a short television film. The short story is regarded as a work of dystopian fiction.Set on a recently colonized Venus, the story begins with a crowd of nine-year-olds peering out their classroom window... Read All Summer In A Day Summary
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book by journalist and poet Eliza Griswold. This study guide follows the book’s first edition, which was published in 2018. Griswold is a journalist known for investigative reporting into political issues, having previously published articles in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation. In Amity and Prosperity, Griswold investigates natural gas companies drilling in Pennsylvania’s western Washington County. The... Read Amity and Prosperity Summary
Isabel Allende’s “And of Clay Are We Created” is the final piece in her short story collection The Stories of Eva Luna. The collection, originally published in 1989 and printed in English in 1991, chronicles the tales that the writer Eva Luna tells her lover Rolf Carlé as they rest in bed. Allende fashions Eva Luna after Scheherazade, a key character in the framing narrative for the multi-tale Middle Eastern epic A Thousand and One... Read And of Clay Are We Created Summary
Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals is a book by renowned Australian philosopher Peter Singer. Published in 1975 and re-released most recently in 2009, with an additional preface by the author, the book is widely recognized as a foundational text within the animal liberation movement. Singer tries to persuade the reader of his or her own implicit “speciesism,” a term he popularized, and he argues that the discrimination against other species... Read Animal Liberation Summary
An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 nonfiction book released in conjunction with the documentary film of the same name. This book, by former vice-president Al Gore, presents scientific information about global climate change. He intersperses this information with personal anecdotes that outline the more human and social dimensions of the issue.An Inconvenient Truth begins with an introduction to the basic science of global warming and the greenhouse gases that cause it. The first forty pages... Read An Inconvenient Truth Summary
Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster is a 2009 non-fiction book that examines the behavior of people amid and after disasters as well as the institutional failure that can worsen disasters. Solnit explores five major disasters and detours to discuss several others while providing commentary on contemporary Western culture, anarchism, and the media’s portrayal of disaster victims.Solnit and the many sociologists she cites present an optimistic view... Read A Paradise Built in Hell Summary
Artemis Fowl (2001) is the first of 11 fantasy novels in the Fowl Adventures series. It was written by Eoin Colfer, an Irish writer, and details the titular character’s attempt to restore his family’s fortune by kidnapping an elf named Holly Short. Taking place in Colfer’s home country of Ireland, the novel is also his first foray into the fantasy genre. The novel explores themes of community, environmentalism, and the line between magic and science.In... Read Artemis Fowl Summary
A Sand County Almanac is a 1949 nonfiction book by the American naturalist and writer Aldo Leopold. The book is structured as a series of essays, beginning with Leopold’s description of a year on his farm and progressing to a series of essays on humanity’s relationship with nature, culminating in an argument for an ethical approach to the land. Published by Oxford University Press a year after Leopold’s death, the book is credited with having... Read A Sand County Almanac Summary
This study guide refers to the 2004 House of Anansi edition of Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress. The book is a printed version of five Massey Lectures that Wright delivered in Canada in 2004. Wright is a Canadian author of historical fiction and non-fiction with a background in archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics. This lecture series uses Wright’s unique set of skills as a storyteller and student of history to provide a sweeping and... Read A Short History of Progress Summary
Irish philosopher and Anglican Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) wrote A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710. The short work expounds Berkeley’s philosophy of immaterialism, a form of empiricism asserting that nothing exists outside of a mind’s perception of it. Objects, therefore, are not things, but ideas. Berkeley’s philosophy critiques that of contemporary empiricists John Locke and David Hume, who contended that the mind can perceive the material world in abstract and that... Read A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge Summary
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail is a 1998 travel book by American-British author Bill Bryson. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and a 2014 Cable News Network (CNN) poll named it the funniest travel book ever written. In addition, it inspired the 2015 film A Walk in the Woods starring Robert Redford as Bryson, Nick Nolte as Stephen Katz (his primary hiking companion), and Emma Thompson as... Read A Walk in the Woods Summary
Written by Andrew Clements, A Week in the Woods is a middle-grade realistic survival fiction novel originally published in 2002. It is part of the Hardy Elementary collection of books by the same author. It focuses on the initially antagonistic relationship between an upper-class fifth grader named Mark and his classist science teacher, Bill Maxwell. The novel explores how the two characters eventually come to forgive and understand one another when they must help each... Read A Week in the Woods Summary
“A White Heron” is the most popular short story by American author Sarah Orne Jewett. A work of American regionalism and romanticism, the tale emphasizes the setting, the human-animal connection, a celebration of nature, and individual experience. Jewett is a famous figure in literary regionalism, and her work often explores themes of the natural world. In “A White Heron,” Jewett uses literary techniques such as personification to make the environment and animals come alive as... Read A White Heron Summary
Eudora Welty’s short story “A Worn Path” is considered one of the author’s finest works and a classic in the repertory of American Southern literature. First published in 1941 as a stand-alone piece in The Atlantic Monthly, it was also included in her first short story collection, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, published that same year. The story established Welty as a notable new voice in American literature. In addition to short stories... Read A Worn Path Summary
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life is a 2015 memoir by William Finnegan, a writer for The New Yorker and the author of several social journalism books such as A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique and Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters. In Barbarian Days, Finnegan reflects on his upbringing in California and Hawaii, as well as his coming of age in the late 1960s. He relays his experience of the surfing counterculture... Read Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life Summary
Bird Box is a 2014 post-apocalyptic, dystopian horror novel by Josh Malerman. The story follows a woman’s struggle to protect two children in a world where people are driven to violence by unseen monsters, touching on such themes as paranoia, raising children to deal with an uncertain future, and the dangers of exceptionalism. Bird Box won a Michigan Notable Book Award and was also nominated for the James Herbert Award as well as the Bram... Read Bird Box Summary
In Blowout, TV host and political commentator Rachel Maddow interconnects a series of global events, all woven together by one common thread: the oil and gas industry. Through the various vignettes, Maddow offers readers a book that is part rallying cry, part exposé, part investigative journalism. Blowout sheds light on forgotten, buried news stories that have been swallowed up and dissolved into the status quo. From the opening anecdote about a Russian gas station opening... Read Blowout Summary
Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982) is an autobiographical travelogue by American historian William Least Heat-Moon. The trip in question—a 13,000-mile circuit around the States—began in 1978, the book’s title deriving from out-of-the-way routes drawn in blue on an old road atlas. The author-narrator researches local history of the areas visited and interviews the many people he meets. Heat-Moon spent the subsequent years composing and revising the manuscript, and after a few rejections, it... Read Blue Highways: A Journey into America Summary
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Written in 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a nonfiction book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The work examines modern botany and environmentalism through the lens of the traditions and cultures of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Through a series of personal reflections, the author explores the connection between living things and human efforts to cultivate a more sustainable... Read Braiding Sweetgrass Summary
Brian’s Hunt (2003) by Gary Paulsen is the fifth and final book in the middle grade coming-of-age survival series, Brian’s Saga. It is preceded by Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, and Brian’s Return. In Brian’s Hunt, Brian returns to the woods two years after his first wilderness survival experience. Paulsen, an experienced outdoorsman, highlights Brian’s preference for a simple life in nature over the hustle of the civilized world. The novel is praised for its... Read Brian's Hunt Summary
Brian's Return (1999) is a young adult fiction novel and the fourth book in author Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series. Paulsen draws on his personal experiences from the wilderness to create Brian’s outdoor adventure and survival narrative throughout the series, stating in the author note, “Virtually all that happens to Brian in these books has happened to me at some point in my life” (112). Paulsen was awarded the Newberry Honor in 1988 for Hatchet, the first... Read Brian's Return Summary
Brian’s Winter (1996), a young adult novel by Gary Paulsen, is the third book in the Hatchet series of survival stories. Brian’s Winter chronologically follows Hatchet, acting as an alternate ending to Hatchet in which Brian is not rescued, and must continue to survive in the woods through the winter. Paulsen uses his own firsthand knowledge of winter survival skills to create a vivid and realistic portrayal of winter in the Canadian woods.Other works by... Read Brian's Winter Summary
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, a nonfiction history by librarian and historian Dee Brown, was published in 1970 and became a widely influential bestseller. Dee Brown (full name Dorris Alexander Brown) was the author of more than 30 fiction and nonfiction books. As a librarian at the University of Illinois, he had access to the primary historical records from the late 19th century that became the main... Read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee Summary
Originally published in 1986, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner illustrates how precarious the American West’s water supply is. This reality was something few people, including Westerners, realized at the time. The book was listed as one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th century and was nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award. It was also made into a PBS documentary. There is... Read Cadillac Desert Summary
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck was originally published in 1945. A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, California, which is near Monterey—the location of Cannery Row. Aside from a few years in Palo Alto, New York, and Los Angeles, Steinbeck spent most of his adult life living in Monterey County, and he drew on his personal experiences to write Cannery Row.Considered literary fiction or classic literature, Cannery Row is realistic and was written... Read Cannery Row Summary
William Cronon wrote a scholarly assessment of the ecological changes in the land wrought by the arrival of New England’s European settlers from about 1620 to 1800 called Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983). Cronon examines both the Native American and European land usage during the pre-colonial time period, including farming, hunting, fishing, and the commercial harvesting of the fruits of the land. In particular, Cronon explores the... Read Changes in the Land Summary
Written in 2012 by Carl Hiaasen, Chomp is a young adult novel set in Hiaasen’s native Florida (specifically, Everglades National Park). Hiaasen, who began his career as a journalist, is the author of six other books for young readers (as well as numerous adult novels). Because his work blends humor with grim realism, Chomp features characters who are just as “bizarre” as their Florida setting. Primarily known for his crime fiction, Hiaasen also crafts stories... Read Chomp Summary
Following his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), geologist and anthropologist Jared Diamond published a companion book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in 2006. Where Guns, Germs, and Steel described how various environments around the world helped or hindered human civilization, Collapse explains how environmental abuse ruined many past societies and how it threatens civilizations today. An updated edition, released in 2011 by Penguin Books, is the subject of this... Read Collapse Summary
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is a work of nonfiction by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, published in 2002. The book argues that a radical change must be made to the Western world’s industrial and manufacturing systems, which are devastating to the natural world in their present state. Through discussions of environmentalism, industrialism, and design, the authors urge us, as a society, to think differently about what it means to be... Read Cradle To Cradle Summary
Dark Life (2010) is a dystopian young adult novel by American author Kat Falls. The novel is the first of a two-part series, followed by Rip Tide. Dark Life is set in post-apocalyptic East-Coast America, now ruled by a government called the Commonwealth. Water covers most of the planet’s surface in the wake of climate change and a select group of pioneers now live under the sea. Teenage protagonist Ty Townson uncovers a wide-reaching government... Read Dark Life Summary
James Dickey’s 1970 novel Deliverance explores themes of masculinity, the relationship between images and reality, and ideas about civilization and nature through the experience of four urban men on a canoe trip gone awry. Dickey, an influential American poet and novelist, was born in 1923 in Atlanta, Georgia. His poetry is known for its vivid imagery and exploration of nature and the human condition. Before turning to writing full time, Dickey served in World War... Read Deliverance Summary
Desert Solitaire is Edward Abbey’s 1968 memoir of his six months serving as a park ranger in Utah’s Arches National Park in the late 1950s. Throughout the book, Abbey describes his vivid and moving encounters with nature in her various forms: animals, storms, trees, rock formations, cliffs and mountains. He communicates an uncommon reverence for nature, and an unmistakable disdain for tame, cultured humanity, including the vast majority of the tourists who visit the park... Read Desert Solitaire Summary
Dogsong, first published in 1985, is a young adult novel by American author Gary Paulsen, who wrote Dogsong while he was training his dog sled team for his first Iditarod run. It was awarded the Newbery Honor Award in 1986. Paulsen, who was a popular author of young adult and children’s contemporary literature, is best known for books in the coming-of-age genre, often dealing with surviving the wilderness and embracing nature. He authored more than... Read Dogsong Summary
Olga Tokarczuk is among Poland’s most famous and critically acclaimed contemporary authors. She has received multiple national and international literary awards, including the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her most well-known novels and their translation dates into English are House of Day, House of Night (2003), Primeval and Other Times (2010), Flights (2018), and The Books of Jacob (2021).Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was published in Poland in 2009 but didn’t... Read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Summary
Duma Key by Stephen King is a novel in the literary-horror genre, praised for its eerie, spooky atmosphere and suspenseful build-up. Published in 2008, Duma Key is the first novel by King to be set in Florida. The book follows Edgar Freemantle as he moves from Minnesota to the island of Duma (one of the Florida Keys, or small islands) after a life-changing accident. Tormented by phantom-limb pain from his amputation and unable to remember... Read Duma Key Summary
Dune is a 1965 science fiction novel by American author Frank Herbert. As the first in a series of novels, Dune introduces Paul Atreides and his gradual emergence as a unifying, powerful figure in a galaxy filled with political intrigue and the threat of religious war. Now considered one of the foremost examples of American science fiction, Dune won numerous prestigious awards and has been adapted several times in films and television series, most recently... Read Dune Summary
Eating Animals is a nonfiction book written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published originally in 2009. Foer is an accomplished novelist, and Eating Animals is his first foray into long-form nonfiction writing. The book fits into a genre of criticism of the food industry, specifically factory farming and animal welfare. Eating Animals is a New York Times bestseller, though it met with mixed reviews regarding both the content and style of Foer’s writing. In 2018... Read Eating Animals Summary
In the memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Janisse Ray describes growing up amidst her family’s junkyard in rural south Georgia. She structures the book in a series of short chapters, each of which focuses on a different aspect of her family life. Between these chapters, Ray also writes descriptions of the longleaf pine forests–an ecosystem that once covered the south Georgia landscape and has been largely destroyed by logging. Ray is born in Baxley... Read Ecology of a Cracker Childhood Summary
Ecotopia is a novel set in an alternative historical timeline, one in which Washington, Oregon, and Northern California have seceded from the United States to form a new country: Ecotopia. After independence, the two countries have severed all diplomatic relations and have existed side-by-side with virtually no communication, though there is plenty of mutual distrust, even after twenty years. Enter the novel’s protagonist, William Weston, “top international affairs reporter” for the Times-Post newspaper, who has... Read Ecotopia Summary
Escaping the Giant Wave is a middle-grade disaster thriller by American author Peg Kehret. The story follows 13-year-old Kyle Davidson and his little sister, BeeBee Davidson, as they struggle to survive an earthquake, a fire, and a tsunami. Kyle battles to save BeeBee and himself, and he learns to overcome his own fears. Escaping the Giant Wave is one of six novels centered around natural disasters by Kehret and was published in 2003. Kehret has... Read Escaping the Giant Wave Summary
Fablehaven was written by Brandon Mull and first published in 2006. It is the first in a series about an ecological preserve for magical creatures. In the novel, middle-school-aged siblings Kendra and Seth take a trip to their grandparents’ land in rural Connecticut, which they soon realize is hiding magic of all types. The siblings explore the magical world they have discovered while learning how to be both brave and responsible.Fablehaven deals with themes concerning... Read Fablehaven Summary
Set in Canada, American author Will Hobbs’s young-adult novel Far North (1996) follows Gabe Rogers, who lives with his grandparents in Austin, Texas. When Gabe tells his father that he wants to live with him in Canada, his father tells him he may on two conditions. First, Gabe must travel up north to experience the severe cold of the Northwest Territories for one year. Second, he must attend boarding school. While flying through Canada with... Read Far North Summary
Feed by M.T. Anderson, published in 2002, is a young adult dystopian cyberpunk novel set in a future in which excessive consumerism is at the center of human identity and technology-driven artificiality serves as a distraction for a world that is in the final stages of complete ecological destruction. The feed is a brain-implanted device that integrates computer and network capabilities into the user’s consciousness and biological functions.For most, the feed is implanted at birth... Read Feed Summary
In 2006, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New York Times journalist Elizabeth Kolbert published Field Notes from a Catastrophe, an urgent review of climate change. The book began as a tripartite publication in the New Yorker, for which the political journalist received a National Magazine Award.Kolbert’s investigation begins on Greenland’s west coast, where natives have noticed the shrinking of icebergs for years. In another northerly location, the Alaskan island of Shishmaref is disappearing underwater... Read Field Notes from a Catastrophe Summary
Barbara Kingsolver’s 2012 novel Flight Behavior presents a symbolic connection between Dellarobia Turnbow, an unhappy farm wife who secretly dreams of running away from it all, and a surprising migration of monarch butterflies that alight upon her in-laws’ property in Feathertown, Tennessee. As the butterflies struggle to survive and reproduce to continue their species, Dellarobia struggles in her efforts to deal with the consequences of her past decisions and the possibility of her new life... Read Flight Behavior Summary
Full Body Burden: Growing up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats is a 2012 nonfiction account by Kristen Iversen. Half memoir, half investigative journalism, the book covers Iversen’s life in a town near Denver, Colorado, as well as Rocky Flats—the nearby nuclear production facility. Quiet, observant, and adventurous, Iversen is the oldest of four children. The family keeps many pets, and Iversen adores horseback riding on their pasture at a new neighborhood near Rocky Flats... Read Full Body Burden Summary
In Newbery medalist Louis Sachar’s sci-fi thriller Fuzzy Mud (2015), Tamaya and Marshall cut through the restricted woods behind their school to avoid a bully—but encounter a strange mud that has the potential to destroy nearly all life on Earth. While Marshall struggles with the emotional effects of being bullied, Tamaya develops an unusually aggressive rash from the mud and worries that in protecting Marshall she has gravely injured Chad. Each character faces difficult ethical... Read Fuzzy Mud Summary
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash is a 2012 non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes. Garbology is an analysis of American consumption, trash production, and what happens to everything in our disposable economy after we discard it. Through statistical analysis, interviews, and personal stories, Humes tells the story of our largest export—our trash—and how trash came to be synonymous with American life.Humes divides Garbology into three sections: first, an analysis of our... Read Garbology Summary
Enigmatic and strange, English poet Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” has sparked multiple interpretations since its publication in 1862. The poem helped launch her career and expand the Pre-Raphaelite art movement into literature.The long narrative poem centers on Lizzie’s rescue of her sister from an enchantment cast by malicious goblins. Fairy tales and folklore inspired many Victorian writers, who felt weary about England’s increasing industrialization.Often seen as an allegory, scholars have posited that the poem’s characters... Read Goblin Market Summary
Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books by Gary Paulsen is a 2001 nonfiction work covering the events that inspired the author to write Hatchet, a 1986 survival bildungsroman and Newbery Medal winner listed among the top 100 children’s books of all time by School Library Journal (“School Library Journal Top 100 Children’s Novels, 2012 Poll.” Library Thing). The award-winning novel follows Brian Robeson as he survives alone in the remote Canadian... Read Guts Summary
Half Brother (2010) is a young adult novel by Kenneth Oppel. In the novel, Oppel combines and fictionalizes several experiments in which chimpanzees learned sign language to communicate. The story follows the Tomlin family as they adopt a baby chimpanzee to see if it can learn and use language. Through this experiment and its effect on the characters, the text explores the themes of family, belonging, animal rights, communication, individuality, and growing up. The novel... Read Half Brother Summary
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (2016) is Pulitzer Prize-winning author, biologist, and environmental advocate Edward O. Wilson’s in-depth look at the planetary threat of mass extinction, known as the Sixth Extinction, taking place at humanity’s own hands. The current rate of extinction is nearly 1,000 times higher than during the pre-human era, and traditional conservation movements will not work fast enough to save the natural world. However, Wilson argues that there is still time... Read Half-Earth Summary
Hatchet, a Newbery Award-winning novel published in 1987 by author Gary Paulsen, is an esteemed story about a young boy’s struggle to survive after his airplane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. This work of young adult fiction appeals to readers of all ages for its descriptive prose and exciting plot. This guide refers to the 1999 First Aladdin Paperbacks edition.Plot SummaryThirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is in the middle of his parent’s divorce and struggling to contain... Read Hatchet Summary
Kirby Larson’s Hattie Big Sky is a 2006 young adult historical fiction novel that won the Newbery Honor Award. Larson is a young adult author who specializes in writing historical fiction centering on strong female protagonists. Set during World War I, the novel follows Hattie Brooks as she travels to Montana to work on the farm that her uncle leaves to her after he dies. The novel explores themes of community, overcoming adversity, and issues... Read Hattie Big Sky Summary
Swiss author Johanna Spyri originally published the middle-grade fiction novel Heidi in German in two volumes in 1880. The novel quickly became a beloved classic children’s book that has since been adapted into 25 film and television versions, including a 1968 made-for-TV movie and a very popular anime series in 1974. It has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. Spyri was born in Hirzel, a Zurich village that shares a border with the German... Read Heidi Summary
Here by Richard McGuire is a graphic novel published on December 4, 2014, by Pantheon Books. The graphic novel focuses on the same corner of a room over billions of years. It depicts the area long before the house is built and long after it falls. By using different visual styles, overlapping panels, and non-chronological narration, McGuire creates a narrative that comments on the nature of time and life. Here is considered a transformative work... Read Here Summary
High Tide in Tucson is a series of essays by heralded American novelist Barbara Kingsolver, collected and published in 1995. The essays are wide-ranging in subject matter, addressing topics from politics, to nature, to midcentury domestic life, but all reflect Kingsolver’s observations about herself and the people around her. Prior to her writing career, Kingsolver had a wide range of other professional experiences that influence essays in the book.Most of the essays in High Tide... Read High Tide in Tucson Summary
H Is for Hawk (2014) is British author Helen MacDonald’s award-winning memoir about her attempts to train a goshawk named Mabel in the wake of her father’s death. It is a memoir of grief, self-discovery, and the healing power of nature. MacDonald intersperses her descriptions of training Mabel with references to the memoirs of T.H. White, who writes about his own hapless attempts at falconry in the 1930s. The memoir was an instant bestseller and... Read H Is For Hawk Summary
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2015) is a work of popular science by Israeli writer, professor, and futurist Yuval Noah Harari. Published in multiple languages, it is a continuation of the work of Harari’s previous book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. While Sapiens contextualized the advents of modernity within humans’ evolutionary legacy, Homo Deus speculates about what lies in wait for humanity in the distant future. Harari grounds his discussion in an... Read Homo Deus Summary
Published in 2016, Hour of the Bees is a young adult magical realism novel by Lindsay Eagar. Set in contemporary New Mexico, the story follows 12-year-old Carol as she spends the summer on her grandfather’s sheep ranch, helping her family prepare it for sale and helping care for her grandfather, who has dementia. However, her grandfather’s stories of the land’s magic and history cause her to fall in love with it. Hour of the Bees... Read Hour of the Bees Summary
American author Tobias Wolff, known for memoirs like In Pharaoh's Army (1994) and short stories like “Bullet in the Brain” (1995), published “Hunters in the Snow” in 1981 in his first collection of short stories, In the Garden of North American Martyrs. The story is believed to be inspired by the painting Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel. The story, narrated from a third-person limited perspective, focuses on the relationship between three characters: Tub... Read Hunters in the Snow Summary
Inferno by Dan Brown is the fourth installment in Brown’s Robert Langdon series of mystery/thriller novels, following (in order) Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol, and preceding Origin. Each edition covers a self-contained story, so readers need not follow the series in order, and often includes themes centered on European and Christian history and cultural traditions. The title character, Robert Langdon, is the only recurring character. Inferno won the Goodreads... Read Inferno Summary
Published in 1971, In the Shadow of Man is the third and most famous book by British primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall. The work details Goodall’s groundbreaking study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park and her unlikely journey from being a secretary in the UK to heading a major chimpanzee study in East Africa and becoming one of the world’s foremost primatology experts. Functioning as both a memoir and a scientific exploration of chimp... Read In the Shadow of Man Summary
Invitation to the Game is a young adult science fiction novel by Canadian writer Monica Hughes. It received the Hal Clement Award in 1992. Originally published in 1990, it was rereleased under the title The Game in 2010. This study guide refers to the Simon & Schuster 2010 print edition.Plot SummaryThe novel tells the story of Lisse, a teenager in 2154. She lives in a dystopian world where robots have taken a majority of the... Read Invitation To The Game Summary
Ishmael is a philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn, published by Bantam/Turner books in 1992. Quinn is a prolific writer specializing in cultural critique, and Ishmael embraces many of the themes that Quinn explores in his other fiction and nonfiction works, such as sustainability and the mythology of human civilization. As a philosophical novel, the work follows a somewhat Socratic dialogue between an unnamed narrator and a telepathic gorilla, Ishmael, using rhetorical conventions to display and... Read Ishmael Summary
Originally published in 1960, Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins is a middle grade historical fiction/adventure novel. Karana, the protagonist and narrator, is only 12 when hunters land on her peaceful island home and kill many of her people, including her father. When the remaining villagers leave the island in search of a safe place to rebuild their lives, she stays behind and must learn to survive on her own. O’Dell drew inspiration from... Read Island of the Blue Dolphins Summary
Jason’s Gold by Will Hobbs is a work of young adult historical fiction first published in 1990. Set in 1897, the story follows protagonist Jason Hawthorn, age 15, as he journeys to the Klondike goldfields in a quest for wealth. Jason’s path follows the most common routes used during the gold rush, and he meets a variety of allies and foes, both fictitious and historical. The story explores themes regarding The Transformational Power of Adventure... Read Jason's Gold Summary
Jaws is a 1974 thriller by American author Peter Benchley. In the novel, a great white shark attacks people in a small resort town. The local police chief leads a voyage to catch and kill the shark to save the town from financial ruin. The novel was a commercial hit and was adapted into a 1975 film which became the highest grossing movie in history at that time. This guide uses an e-book version of... Read Jaws Summary
Jean Craighead George’s children’s novel Julie of the Wolves (1972), set in 20th-century Alaska, tells the story of a 13-year-old Inuit girl named Miyax who is lost in the wilderness after escaping a violent husband and a life that does not suit her. Miyax struggles to survive in a harsh environment as she attempts to make her way to San Francisco. A pack of wolves helps her, and she learns to deepen her appreciation of... Read Julie Of The Wolves Summary
“Kew Gardens” is a short story by British author Virginia Woolf, published privately in 1919 before appearing in Monday or Tuesday, Woolf’s 1921 collection of short stories. The story explores themes such as Moments of Being, The Connection Between Humanity and Nature, and Interpersonal Conflict.This guide refers to the version of “Kew Gardens” available in Project Gutenberg’s online edition of Monday or Tuesday.The story follows four pairs of people as they wander Kew Gardens, a... Read Kew Gardens Summary
Lost in the Barrens is a 1956 middle grade novel based loosely on the lived experiences of author Farley Mowat. Mowat’s experiences in the remote wilderness of northern Canada inspired an adult version of the saga, People of the Deer (1952), and the children’s adaptation. He is known for blending survival narratives with intricate details about the Canadian northern wilderness. Mowat is best known for Never Cry Wolf (1963), which Disney adapted for film in... Read Lost In The Barrens Summary
Margaret Atwood’s novel MaddAddam, published in 2013, completes her post-apocalyptic MaddAddam trilogy that begins with Oryx and Crake (2003) and continues with The Year of the Flood (2009). The trilogy takes place in the aftermath of a destroyed technological dystopia, a world in which corporations have totalitarian control. Atwood, an award-winning Canadian author, has been a prolific writer of poetry, short stories, novels, and many other forms since the early 1960s. She is known for... Read MaddAddam Summary
Mean Spirit (1990) is the first novel by Chickasaw author Linda Hogan. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991, it was well-reviewed and established Hogan as an important Indigenous author. The novel tells the story of what came to be known as the Osage murders, a string of killings in Oklahoma’s Osage country after oil was discovered on Osage land. The murders were ultimately discovered to have been the result of not only... Read Mean Spirit Summary
“Meg Merrilies” (sometimes titled “Old Meg she was a gipsy” or simply “old Meg”) is a short, playful ballad by the English Romantic poet John Keats. It was written on Keats’s walking tour of northern England and Scotland in 1818. At the time, Keats was worried about the health of his brother, Tom, and about his own health; the tuberculosis that would soon kill Tom had already begun to manifest in Keats. While his doctor... Read Meg Merrilies Summary
A meditative lyric poem on the boundaries between people, “Mending Wall” was first published in 1914 in North of Boston, a collection of poetry by the American poet Robert Frost. “Mending Wall” is one of Frost’s most popular and anthologized works. It exemplifies the themes which came to define his poetry. Set in a rural American wood, its honest, colloquial tone belies a psychologically deep and ambiguous reality. The poem’s most quotable lines exhort two... Read Mending Wall Summary
Written by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010) is a nonfiction account of how a loose-knit group of scientists—Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Bill Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow—with similar political agendas worked to prevent government regulation by creating the appearance of scientific debate on several topics. These topics included smoking (both first- and secondhand hand... Read Merchants of Doubt Summary
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (2019) is a non-fiction book by the English author and journalist Adam Higginbotham. The book explores the causes and consequences of the 1986 explosion at the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station in Ukraine, which killed at least 31 plant workers and firefighters and resulted in the evacuation of over 100,000 people. The radioactive fallout from the disaster ostensibly caused an unknown number... Read Midnight in Chernobyl Summary
Published in 1851, Moby Dick was based in part on author Herman Melville’s own experiences on a whaleship. The novel tells the story of Ahab, the captain of a whaling vessel called The Pequod, who has a three-year mission to collect and sell the valuable oil of whales at the behest of the ship’s owners. Instead, the furious Ahab takes the ship on his own personal journey through hell, seeking revenge against the eponymous white... Read Moby Dick Summary
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Farley Mowat published Never Cry Wolf in 1963. The book is a non-fiction memoir of the 18 months he spent in the Barrens, a treeless area of tundra, studying arctic wolves for the Dominion Wildlife Service. Told that these wolves killed caribou for sport, Farley was surprised to discover that wolves never attacked humans and only culled the deer herds of unhealthy animals. Farley also encountered rampant inefficiency among his government colleagues, which he reports... Read Never Cry Wolf Summary
SummaryNight of the Twisters is a young adult realistic fiction novel written by award-winning author Ivy Ruckman. The book was the recipient of several awards, including the Golden Sower Award, the Iowa Children’s Choice Award, and the Sequoyah Children’s Book Award. It was also recommended as an Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children by the National Science Teachers Association and Children’s Book Council. A movie of the same name based loosely on the book was... Read Night of the Twisters Summary
Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Ninth Ward is a realistic middle grade novel that follows 12-year-old Lanesha, a resident of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward neighborhood, in the days surrounding Hurricane Katrina, a devastating storm that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Lanesha must rely on her resourcefulness, resilience, and fortitude to survive the storm and subsequent flooding of the Ninth Ward. First published in 2010 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, the book earned a School... Read Ninth Ward Summary
No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process is an autobiography published in 2009. Author Colin Beavan, tired of being a liberal who only lectures his wife about not wearing fur, decides to dedicate himself, his wife Michelle, and their toddler Isabella to a year of creating no impact on the environment. His... Read No Impact Man Summary
No Summit out of Sight (2014) is a young adult memoir written by Jordan Romero and Linda LeBlanc. Jordan Romero is the youngest person to ever climb the Seven Summits. The novel explores themes including The Power of Setting and Achieving Goals, Focusing on a Personal Best, and The Value of Teamwork.This guide uses the 2014 Simon & Schuster edition of the memoir.SummaryFourth grader Jordan Romero gazes at a mural of the Seven Summits (the... Read No Summit Out Of Sight Summary
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” is an exemplary piece of Romantic Era poetry. It explores such themes as personal freedom, creation and the craft of poetry, and the role of the poet in 19th-Century British society, among other themes. The speaker makes use of apostrophe and personification to paint a picture of the West Wind’s awesome powers. Moving through the tight terza rima form with playful alliteration, grandiose imagery gradually gives way... Read Ode to the West Wind Summary
Many scholars agree that “Old Pond” (1686) by Matsuo Bashō is one of the most—if not the most—famous haiku of all time. The term “haiku” translates as “play verse,” and though “Old Pond” appears whimsical and simple—a frog jumping into water and the subsequent splash—Bashō utilizes various literary devices such as key words and onomatopoeia to ensure this three-line poem is both didactic and enjoyable. “Old Pond” is instructional, especially for its use of common... Read Old Pond Summary
“Once More to the Lake” is a narrative nonfiction essay written by E. B. White. The essay was originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1941. White (1899-1985) was an American author best known for his children’s novels, including Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, as well as his contribution as co-author to The Elements of Style, a seminal English-language writing guide. “Once More to the Lake” recounts White’s experience of revisiting, as an adult, a lakefront... Read Once More to the Lake Summary
One Foot in Eden is a 2002 crime novel by Ron Rash. Rash employs a blend of Southern Gothic and detective fiction to create suspense and explore the psychological inner conflict of the characters. The novel follows five different narrators as the people of Jocassee, South Carolina, discover the murder of Holland Winchester. As the investigation continues, the characters must come to terms with the displacement of their community while Carolina Power evicts the inhabitants... Read One Foot in Eden Summary
One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture is a 2019 book on how the American food production system must move beyond conventional and sustainable farming to embrace regenerative farming strategies tailored to individual environments. Anderson, who grew up on a conventional ranch outside of Bison, South Dakota, has firsthand knowledge of US conventional farming strategies. As a young journalist for the Tri-State Neighbor newspaper, she started off wanting... Read One Size Fits None Summary
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (published in 1859) is a seminal work in evolutionary biology of great historical and scientific importance. Darwinian thought, especially regarding evolution, is now commonly accepted as the most powerful theory in biology and the natural history of species—and the system of natural selection that this theory advanced has been applied (and misappropriated)... Read On the Origin of Species Summary
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is a personal narrative describing her observations of a creek near her home in Virginia over the course of a year. Dillard, a suburban housewife, uses a first-person narrative voice to describe her walks, paying homage to a tradition of nature writing while posing large questions about the nature of God and wilderness. The author blends research into the natural world, philosophical inquiry, and poetic imagery while engaging... Read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Summary
“Preface to Lyrical Ballads” is an essay by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In 1798 Wordsworth wrote, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poetry collection Lyrical Ballads. Believing that the poems were so novel in theme and style that they required some explanation, Wordsworth wrote a prefatory essay to accompany the second edition of the poems in 1800; he then expanded the essay for the third edition of 1802.The “Preface” is often considered a manifesto... Read Preface to Lyrical Ballads Summary
Published in 2000, Prodigal Summer is Barbara Kingsolver’s fifth novel. Heavily influenced by Kingsolver’s childhood experiences and current home in Appalachia, as well as her studies of ecology and evolutionary biology, Prodigal Summer tells three intersecting stories that take place over one “prodigal summer” in rural Appalachia. Set in the fictional Zebulon County, Prodigal Summer is as much a story of the natural world, and its progression over one fertile and flowering summer, as it... Read Prodigal Summer Summary
Remarkable Creatures (2009), a novel by Tracy Chevalier, is historical fiction that explores the unlikely friendship between Mary Anning, a working-class woman with a passion for fossil hunting, and Elizabeth Philpot, an unmarried middle-class woman. The novel is set against the backdrop of the rigid societal conventions of 19th-century England. When Mary uncovers a prehistoric fossil on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, her discovery ignites enthusiasm in the scientific community and threatens her village’s deeply... Read Remarkable Creatures Summary
Riddley Walker (1980) is a dystopian science fiction novel by Russell Hoban. The novel is famous for its use of a phonetic, idiosyncratic version of English, spoken by the characters who live in a post-apocalyptic society. Riddley Walker won numerous awards, including the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.Plot SummaryA young boy named Riddley Walker lives in Inland, the name given to the south of England 2,000 years after a nuclear war sent human... Read Riddley Walker Summary
Riders to the Sea (1904) is a one-act Irish play by John Millington Synge, originally performed in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The play portrays the events of one day in the cottage of a low-income family living on Inishmaan, one of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, as they cope with the loss of male relatives to the rough waters between the islands and mainland Ireland. This short play incorporates themes... Read Riders to the Sea Summary
IntroductionEmma Donoghue’s Room is a 2010 novel about a boy named Jack who lives in a single room with his mother, Ma. Room is a crime thriller novel that explores themes of trauma, innocence, and adaptability through the eyes of five-year-old narrator, Jack. Room has received many awards, including the ALA Alex Award, the Indies Choice Book Award for Fiction, and The New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year award. Room was... Read Room Summary
Roughing It (1872) is the second major work by American humorist Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). It recounts his experiences during the Nevada silver rush of the 1860s. After his failed attempts to make a fortune as a miner, Twain would later achieve prominence as a lecturer and writer. He initially drew acclaim for his fanciful short story entitled “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865). His best-known titles include The Innocents Abroad (1869)... Read Roughing It Summary
Saints at the River is Ron Rash’s first novel. Before the book’s appearance in 2004, Rash established a reputation as one of the most promising young voices in contemporary Appalachian literature as a poet and short story writer. In his poetry collections, Rash, a native of rural South Carolina, captured the beauty of the Carolina wilderness and, at the same time, investigated the challenges of preserving that wilderness in the new millennium. His award-winning short... Read Saints at the River Summary
Same Sun Here, co-written by Silas House and Neela Vaswani, details a year in the lives of two young people: an Indian immigrant living in New York City, and a small-town boy from Kentucky. Written as a series of letters between the two main characters, this middle grade novel is narrated by each author writing from the perspective of a separate character. Published in 2011, the book received the Nautilus Book Award, the E.B. White... Read Same Sun Here Summary
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is widely regarded as a foundational text of the 20th century environmental movement. Originally published as a series in The New Yorker, Carson’s essays carefully articulate the impacts of widespread chemical use for insect and plant control. Throughout the text, Carson emphasizes the ways that humans disregard the interrelation of species on earth, and argues that as a result, humans are at a pivotal moment. If methods of insect control are... Read Silent Spring Summary
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata was originally published episodically in Japanese literary journals between 1935 and 1937. It was finally published as a complete version in 1948. The novel takes place on the snowy northwestern coast of Japan and tells the story of the ill-fated romance between a geisha named Komako and her wealthy client, Shimamura. In the intimate setting of the onsen, Kawabata explores the Commodification of Female Talent and Affection, Landscapes as Metaphors... Read Snow Country Summary
William Shakespeare is the best-known author of the English Renaissance—also known as the Early Modern Period and the Elizabethan Age. Though readers’ attention tends to be more riveted toward his plays, Shakespeare published 154 sonnets during his exceptionally prolific career, in addition to the longer-form poems Venus and Adonis (1593), The Rape of Lucrece (1594), and The Phoenix and the Turtle (1601). Fifteen editions of Venus and Adonis—a poem in the form of 199 six-line... Read Sonnet 18 Summary
Speaker for the Dead (1986) is the second book in the Ender sextet written by Orson Scott Card. Card is a renowned American science fiction author and has won numerous awards for his writing, including four for Speaker of the Dead—the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.Speaker for the Dead is set... Read Speaker for the Dead Summary
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a short, structured poem written in 1922 by the American poet Robert Frost, one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. The poem was originally published in 1923 in the magazine New Republic, and then in Frost’s poetry collection New Hampshire. The poem explores themes of nature, beauty, duty, life, and death, and is written using simple and accessible language that has made it beloved by... Read Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Summary
In Roland Smith’s 2011 adventure novel, Storm Runners, three middle-grade students struggle to survive and find shelter during a hurricane after their school bus crashes. While a team of rescuers drives toward the disaster in search of the missing kids, the three students use all their skills and brainpower simply to stay alive.Award-winning author Smith spent decades working as a zookeeper and world-traveling animal rescuer. He has turned his experiences into award-winning novels and non-fiction... Read Storm Runners Summary
American writer and essayist Ann Pancake’s debut novel Strange as This Weather Has Been is a work of fiction that blends elements of Pancake’s own upbringing in Appalachia to tell the tale of a present-day coal mining family. Published in 2007, this is a character-driven novel with a ticking clock. Set amid the turmoil of West Virginia, Pancake’s characters are thrust into one of the most dangerous regions of the country, where strip mining has... Read Strange as this Weather Has Been Summary
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016) is an in-depth exploration of the rise of the Tea Party movement in Louisiana by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. In an effort to understand the Tea Party and bolster her empathy for political opinions oppositional to her own, Hochschild spent five years getting to know residents and conducting interviews in and around Lake Charles, Louisiana. Hochschild argues that by understanding one another’s... Read Strangers in Their Own Land Summary
The author of “Sultana’s Dream” is Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, popularly known as Begum Rokeya (“Begum” is the Urdu equivalent of Mrs.). The story is a science fiction social satire that features a feminist utopia called Ladyland. As the title suggests, the narrative takes the form of a dream that the narrator experiences. The narrator is a woman called Sultana (the Arabic title for an empress or the wife of a sultan). The story was originally... Read Sultana's Dream Summary
Swamplandia! is a 2011 novel by the American author Karen Russell. It is an adaptation of her short story “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” first published in the Summer 2006 issue of the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story and later collected in her 2006 book of short stories, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.A Miami native, Russell uses magical realism... Read Swamplandia Summary
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is Victorian writer Thomas Hardy’s 12th novel. It was first published in 1891 as a serial in the newspaper The Graphic; this serialized publication was followed by a three-volume edition in 1891 and a single volume in 1892. Like many of Hardy’s other realist novels, Tess is set in the fictional, southwestern English region of Wessex, using fictional locations closely modelled after real ones. Hardy’s sympathetic portrayal of a young woman... Read Tess of the D'Urbervilles Summary
The Back of the Turtle (2014) is a bestselling novel by Canadian American author Thomas King. King is of Cherokee Greek descent and has garnered acclaim for his novels about Indigenous Canadian experiences, including The Inconvenient Indian and Green Grass Running Water. The Back of the Turtle won King the Governor General’s literary award.The narrative follows Gabriel Quinn, a member of the First Nations community of Lethbridge, Alberta, as he returns to his family’s home... Read The Back of the Turtle Summary
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The Battle of the Labyrinth is a fantasy-adventure novel inspired Greek mythology and written in 2008 by Rick Riordan. It is the fourth in the Percy Jackson series.The novel begins with Percy Jackson is at his freshman orientation at Good High School. Rachel Elizabeth Dare helps him fight two empousai, spectres who were disguised as cheerleaders. Percy flees to Camp Half-Blood, but Rachel remains. Percy is reunited with Annabeth, and they learn Grover is in... Read The Battle of the Labyrinth Summary
“The Bear” is a work of short fiction by William Faulkner, first published in The Saturday Evening Post in May 1942. Faulkner subsequently expanded the story and included it in Go Down, Moses, a collection of related short stories sometimes considered a novel, published later that year. An abbreviated version also appears in his 1955 anthology, Big Woods. As historical fiction set in an imagined Mississippi county, “The Bear” traces a young man’s development in... Read The Bear Summary
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America (2009) tells the true story of the Great Fire of 1910, which burned 3 million acres in Idaho, Montana, Washington, and British Columbia, and is believed to be the largest wildfire in United States history. Authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Timothy Egan, the book describes the newly created United States Forest Service effort to stop the fire and details President Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation battles... Read The Big Burn Summary
Author and journalist Charles Fishman published The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water in 2011. This nonfiction book examines the history and origins of water, the rising concern of water scarcity, and our changed relationship with the substance. Fishman asserts that people generally take water for granted, even though it is crucial to the environment and to society. The book examines how we can repair this dismissive attitude, which Fishman contends... Read The Big Thirst Summary
The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster is a nonfiction book published in 2013 by the American journalist Jonathan M. Katz. Katz, a reporter for the Associated Press (AP), gives a detailed, firsthand account of the 2010 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean island nation of Haiti. The book is a journalist's chronicle of the causes and consequences of a natural disaster, how it can... Read The Big Truck That Went By Summary
Not far from Cincinnati in 1830 lies a “great forest” occupied by the scattered homes of early settlers. Among them is an old, neglected cabin with a front door and boarded-up window. For decades, a white-haired man named Murlock has lived there; he looks 70 but is really 50. He lets his yard grow wild and provides for himself by selling animal skins.Murlock is found dead at his cabin, apparently of natural causes. He’s buried... Read The Boarded Window Summary
Michael Pollan’s 2001 nonfiction book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, asks the reader to stop considering only the human point of view of nature and to take the perspective of the plants themselves. He writes about how humans have affected the evolution of plants and in turn plants have affected our evolution as well. To Pollan, humans are much like the bumblebee in that we rely on plants as much... Read The Botany Of Desire Summary
The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure is a 1993 novel by James Redfield. A bestseller, the novel is a compilation of New Age philosophical and spiritual concepts, which Redfield labels as insights, that are loosely connected by a plot that follows the narrator’s search for them in the Peruvian jungle. An ancient manuscript is rumored to have been discovered, and the insights in the Manuscript claim that the end of the 20th century will witness a... Read The Celestine Prophecy Summary
The Control of Nature by John McPhee was published in 1989 and includes three essays/articles reported from different geographic locales that reflect one common theme: man attempting to control nature. McPhee got his start in journalism writing for Time magazine. He has written for The New Yorker for several decades and has published 30 books, including Annals of the Former World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He has also taught writing at Princeton... Read The Control of Nature Summary
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is a nonfiction book of science journalism delving into key past and present issues surrounding the ecology, politics, and commerce of the Great Lakes. The book was published in 2017 and was the recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Award as well as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Author Dan Egan is a reporter who covers the Great Lakes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is... Read The Death and Life of the Great Lakes Summary
Written by C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Discarded Image is a 1964 nonfiction book that explores the literary landscape of Europe during the Medieval Era. Lewis, who is best known for his children’s book series The Chronicles of Narnia, was also a literature professor at Oxford and Cambridge, as well as one of the most widely celebrated Christian apologists of his time. Published shortly after his death, The Discarded Image explores how medieval writers and... Read The Discarded Image Summary
The Drowned World is a 1962 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by British author J.G. Ballard. Set in a future London that has been completely submerged in the ocean due to climate change-induced flooding, it follows a group of scientists who embark on a mission to study its unique, rapidly evolving flora and fauna. The novel is an extension of a shorter story published in Science Fiction Adventures. The novel is one of the first works... Read The Drowned World Summary
The Echo Maker (2006) is a psychological mystery thriller by American author Richard Powers. The novel follows protagonist Mark Schluter in the wake of an accidental brain injury that led him to believe that his sister, Karin, is an imposter. The resulting conflict leads to questions of meaning, perception, and identity. The author of 13 books as of 2023, Powers has won numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize in 2003, a National Book Award for... Read The Echo Maker Summary
Published in 1976, The Education of Little Tree is a memoir-styled work of fiction written by Forrest Carter, the pseudonym for Asa Earl Carter. The novel received some critical acclaim in the 1980s and was perceived to be the actual memoir of a child growing up in the wilds of Tennessee with his Cherokee grandparents. This premise resonated with the desire of the time to become more attuned to nature. However, the book has since... Read The Education of Little Tree Summary
Published in 2009, Jacqueline Kelly’s The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is a middle grade novel that follows the life of a young Calpurnia as she explores her love for science in the highly patriarchal society that dominated Texas in the late 19th century. The novel received praise from both readers and critics for its thematic emphasis on discovery and personal growth, earning it the Newbery Honor Award in 2010. This guide refers to the 2011... Read The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate Summary
“The Flowers,” a short story by Alice Walker, considers the impact of the Jim Crow South on a young Black girl’s emotional development and social awareness. Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983—along with a National Book Award—for her critically acclaimed work The Color Purple (1982). Her experience growing up poor in the segregated sharecropping community of Eatonton, Georgia, as well as her advocacy as a Womanist activist, inform the personal and social... Read The Flowers Summary
The Future of Life is a 2002 non-fiction book of popular science by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and biologist Edward O. Wilson. In the book, Wilson draws on his decades of experience as a biologist of invertebrates, as well as his years spent advocating for conservation causes, to paint a picture of the threat people pose to the world’s biodiversity and to suggest ways that humanity can change course. The book is structured as... Read The Future of Life Summary
A measure of the quality, prescience, and veracity of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth is that, nearly a century after its first publication, the book remains required reading in literature, world history, and social science courses. The novel is a simple, straightforward narrative about 50 years in the life of Wang Lung, an uneducated farmer in eastern China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this era period was one of continual... Read The Good Earth Summary
Will Allen, author of the 2012 book The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities, co-written with Charles Wilson, is an important figure in the American urban farming movement. Born into a farming family, Allen spent much of his adolescence and early adulthood hoping to avoid the agricultural life; however, after a career in professional basketball and later in corporate sales and marketing, Allen finds himself farming full-time, with idealism in his heart... Read The Good Food Revolution Summary
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a non-fiction thriller, published in 1994, two years after his article “Crisis in the Hot Zone” appeared in The New Yorker. Preston writes often on Ebola, bioweapons, and emerging viruses. The Hot Zone deals with the breaking of Ebola into the human species and a 1989 incident in which an Ebola-like virus, the Reston virus, sweeps through a monkey quarantine facility outside of Washington, DC. The book served... Read The Hot Zone Summary
The Lost World (1995) is a sequel to Michael Crichton’s techno-thriller Jurassic Park, a 1990 bestseller. The original novel focuses on an ambitious business plan to hatch live dinosaurs through genetic engineering and then display them in a family-friendly theme park on Isla Nublar off the coast of Costa Rica. The plan goes awry when the great animals take over the island and compel the company that initially bankrolled the park, In-Gen, to destroy the... Read The Lost World Summary
Irene Hunt’s 1976 middle grade novel The Lottery Rose focuses on a young boy named Georgie who hides the evidence of his abuse and neglect at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend, Steve. After Georgie wins a rosebush at his local grocery store, he becomes attached to the shrub and passionately cares for it. Georgie’s life changes when the court system places him in an all-boys Catholic school, where he meets adults who... Read The Lottery Rose Summary
“The Luck of Roaring Camp” is the short story that established Bret Harte’s (also spelled Hart) reputation in the United States and internationally. Set in a gold prospecting camp in 1850 California, the story explores the themes of relationships between man and nature, the possibility of man’s redemption, and the rejection of standard gender roles. Widely published in newspapers and magazines, Harte was known for his depictions of rough or romantic life in the American... Read The Luck of Roaring Camp Summary
“The Man Who Planted Trees” is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. It chronicles a shepherd’s three-decade-long effort to reforest a barren tract of land in Southeastern France. Spanning a time period shortly before World War I until shortly after World War II, the story is both an antiwar allegory and an environmental allegory. “The Man Who Planted Trees” inspired numerous adaptations across various mediums, including a 1988 Academy Award-winning... Read The Man Who Planted Trees Summary
Written by environmental advocate Edward Abbey in 1975, The Monkey Wrench Gang tells the story of a motley crew of environmental activists fighting industrialization in the American Southwest. Abbey's most famous work of fiction, this novel inspired a generation of eco-activists. Opening in the so-called "aftermath" (1) of the novel, Abbey immediately situates the reader in media res, at the site of a newly-built bridge between Arizona and Utah, over Glen Canyon. A "workman" (4)... Read The Monkey Wrench Gang Summary
In The Nature Principle, journalist and environmentalist Richard Louv calls for action against the nature-deficit disorder, a term he introduced in his bestselling novel Last Child in the Woods. Nature-deficit disorder is the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical detriment caused by a lack of connection with our natural environment. Written in five parts, Louv makes a compelling argument for decreasing the nature-deficit disorder in adults and presents recommendations for how to do so. Louv bases... Read The Nature Principle Summary
The Night of the Iguana, a play by Tennessee Williams, debuted on Broadway in 1961 and went on to run for a respectable 316 performances. It was also nominated for the Best Play Tony Award and marked Williams’s fourth New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award win for Best American Play. The play was first adapted from some elements of a short story by the same title, which Williams published in 1948 as part of a... Read The Night of the Iguana Summary
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is an exploration of what people eat and why. Pollan is an immersive journalist who has studied and written on a wide range of topics including gardening, food, architecture, and psychedelics. Pollan is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Each of Pollan’s books examines the intersection of humans and nature. Pollan’s 2001 book... Read The Omnivore's Dilemma Summary
The prolific American writer, poet, and journalist Stephen Crane is the author of “The Open Boat.” He published his short story in 1897 after surviving a shipwreck earlier in the year. To cover the brewing war between Cuba and its colonizer, Spain, Crane boarded the Commodore as 1896 turned into 1897. The ship sank, and Crane and others endured a day and a half on a tiny lifeboat. Before publishing his fictional account of the... Read The Open Boat Summary
The Orchard Keeper is the 1965 debut novel of American author Cormac McCarthy. The story explores the relationship between a young boy and the man who killed the boy’s father; it explores themes of The Chaos of the Wilderness, Cyclical Violence, and The Encroachment of Modernity. The Orchard Keeper won a number of awards, while McCarthy’s later works would earn him a Pulitzer Prize. This guide is written using an eBook version of the 1993... Read The Orchard Keeper Summary
The Orchid Thief is a nonfiction book by Susan Orlean, originally published in 1998. It is a narrative nonfiction account of the crimes and trial of John Laroche, accused of stealing endangered orchid species from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve in Florida. The basic story of Laroche and his crimes originally ran as an article in The New Yorker, entitled “Orchid Fever” and published in 1995. The book expands the story and also details Orlean’s... Read The Orchid Thief Summary
The Overstory is a 2018 novel by Richard Powers. Weaving together numerous character narratives, it is the story of a collection of environmental activists and their struggles to make their protests heard by society. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.Content Warning: The source text and this guide include depictions of violence, specifically police brutality, as well as discussions of ableism and suicide.Plot SummaryThe Hoel family are descended from Norwegian immigrants who moved from... Read The Overstory Summary
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“The Painted Door” is a short story by Sinclair Ross. It was first published in 1938 and later reprinted in The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories by Sinclair Ross in 1988. Ross is known for his fiction (both short stories and novels) depicting life on the Canadian prairies, particularly during the Great Depression. The author was born in 1908 on a homestead near Shellbrook, Saskatchewan, Canada, and lived in various locations across the Canadian... Read The Painted Door Summary
The Peripheral is a 2014 science-fiction novel by William Gibson. Gibson has been writing science fiction works since the 1970s and is considered one of the founding fathers of the cyberpunk genre. His debut novel, Neuromancer, is one of the genre’s foundational texts and is the only novel to win the Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick awards. Since then, Gibson has written several bestselling science-fiction trilogies. The Peripheral is the first novel of The... Read The Peripheral Summary
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power is an influential work by Daniel Yergin that was originally published in 1991. Yergin, a highly regarded American historian and economic researcher, examines the history and influence of the global oil industry. With a background in energy economics and policy, Yergin brings a wealth of expertise to this comprehensive examination, providing a detailed narrative of the oil industry’s evolution and its substantial impact on global... Read The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power Summary
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck was published in installments from 1933 to 1936, as a novella in 1937, and in a short story collection, The Long Valley, in 1945. Steinbeck drew upon his experience living in the Salinas Valley. The four stories that make up The Red Pony are considered works of classic literature and bildungsroman, or coming-of-age stories. Steinbeck also wrote the screenplay for the 1949 film adaptation of The Red Pony, and... Read The Red Pony Summary
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (2005) is a work of nonfiction by Candice Millard, a former writer and editor for National Geographic. The book describes Roosevelt’s 1914 expedition down an unexplored river in the Amazon rainforest, which nearly cost him his life. Despite poor preparation for the trip, Roosevelt and the group managed to overcome the Amazon’s physical and psychological challenges and placed a 1,000-mile river on the map in a historic... Read The River of Doubt Summary
First published in The Atlantic in 1960, James Hurst’s “The Scarlet Ibis” won the magazine’s “Atlantic First” award. Frequently included in literature anthologies, Hurst’s tragic short story explores themes of pride, shame, and death within the context of coming of age.This guide refers to the 1960 version that appeared in The Atlantic as well as the brief biographical information included in that original publication.Content Warning: The source text uses outdated, offensive terms to describe people... Read The Scarlet Ibis Summary
The Secret Garden is a middle-grade novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was first published as a serialized novel in The American Magazine between November 1910 and August 1911, and in 1911, it was republished in book form. Burnett had already written two extremely successful novels: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and A Little Princess (1905). Over her lifetime, she wrote 36 books and plays and numerous short stories and was one of the most... Read The Secret Garden Summary
“The Shell Collector” (2002), a short story by American author Anthony Doerr, tells the story of an unnamed, blind shell expert living alone with his dog, Tumaini, on an isolated Kenyan island. He receives unwanted international attention after curing a local girl of malaria by exposing her to the bite of a deadly, venomous cone shell.This guide refers to the edition in the short story collection of the same name, published by Simon & Schuster... Read The Shell Collector Summary
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) is a nonfiction book about the development, impact, and extinction of various species throughout the history of the world. Written by Elizabeth Kolbert, an American author, journalist, and Pulitzer Prize winner, the book focuses on Earth’s environmental, biological, and ecological aspects and how these factors impact the world and its inhabitants. Kolbert argues that we are currently in the process of experiencing a “Sixth Extinction” caused almost entirely... Read The Sixth Extinction Summary
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather is the second novel in her classic American series entitled The Great Plains Trilogy. The trilogy includes O, Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918). Each novel in this trilogy explores different stories of women who find themselves challenged, nurtured, and built up by the natural beauty of the American West. These novels explore the conflicts and compromises when women either lean... Read The Song of the Lark Summary
The Spectator Bird, Wallace Stegner’s 11th novel and winner of the 1977 National Book Award, takes a hawklike view, both expansive and intimate, of such things as aging, death, love, loss, temptation, and regret. A sequel to his novel All the Little Live Things (1967), Bird follows the same protagonist and narrator, the retiree Joe Allston, but interlaces past and present, death and rebirth, memory and mythology. Stegner, who was 67 when Bird was published... Read The Spectator Bird Summary
The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting is a classic children’s book first published in 1920. Lofting, an English author and former civil engineer, crafted his tale of an eccentric doctor who learns to talk to animals by drawing on his experiences in the British Empire during World War I. Lofting’s story, which began as letters home to his children to escape the harsh wartime realities, belongs to the fantasy genre and has captivated... Read The Story of Doctor Dolittle Summary
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—and a Vision for Change (2010) is a book by Annie Leonard. It is based on a short animated documentary with the same title (2007) written and narrated by Leonard. Leonard criticizes American consumer society that values novelty, accumulation, and low prices for being unsustainable. Overconsumption affects our health, our happiness, and our planet. Leonard travels from factories, to... Read The Story of Stuff Summary
The Tiger Flu by Larissa Lai is a work of dystopian speculative fiction first published in 2018 by Arsenal Pulp Press, an independent publisher based in Vancouver, Canada. With its focus on futuristic technologies that merge and manipulate human biology, The Tiger Flu can be subclassified as a cyber/biopunk thriller. The book won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award, which recognizes and celebrates the best LGBTQ books of the year. A Chinese Canadian, lesbian writer, Larissa... Read The Tiger Flu Summary
Published in 1995, The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle tells the story of two couples living parallel lives in Southern California: Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, affluent white Americans with a home in the upper-middle-class subdivision of Arroyo Blanco; and Cándido and América Rincón, undocumented immigrants from Mexico living in a makeshift camp at the bottom of the canyon. Rotating among the perspectives of the four protagonists, the novel explores the inequality inherent in the United States... Read The Tortilla Curtain Summary
Published in 1968, the essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” by ecologist Garrett James Hardin, argues that human overpopulation will stress ecosystems beyond their limits and cause a resource catastrophe. The essay has greatly influenced environmentalists. Hardin was a politically controversial, award-winning science writer who taught ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara for over 30 years. Critics on both sides of the political spectrum have resented not only some of his proposed... Read The Tragedy of the Commons Summary
The Transall Saga is a 1998 fantasy/sci-fi novel by author Gary Paulsen, who is best known for his wilderness survival books, such as Hatchet. The plot revolves around young protagonist Mark Harrison, who goes on a weeklong hiking trip and is transported to what appears to be another world—Transall. He must learn to survive among strange vegetation, animals, and people—all in the midst of war—as he tries to find a way home.Content Warning: The Transall... Read The Transall Saga Summary
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming is a 2019 non-fiction book by the American journalist David Wallace-Wells. Subtitled Life After Warming, the book explores the projected meteorological, sociological, and psychological consequences of climate change over the course of the 21st century. A New York Times bestseller, The Uninhabitable Earth appeared on numerous best books of the year lists, including those of The Economist, Time, and NPR. It is adapted from Wallace-Wells’s 2017 New York magazine... Read The Uninhabitable Earth Summary
The Virgin Suicides is a realistic fiction novel written by Jeffrey Eugenides and originally published in 1993. Using death by suicide as its central motif, the novel examines the themes of The Objectification of Women, Romanticizing the Past, and The Effects of Loss. A statement of youth disillusionment, death by suicide becomes The Death of the Future, another of the novel’s themes. The novel was adapted into a critically acclaimed film directed by Sofia Coppola... Read The Virgin Suicides Summary
John Lanchester’s The Wall (2019) is dystopian cli-fi (climate science fiction) novel set in a near-future in which severe weather events and rising sea levels destroyed all the shores in the world and created a refugee crisis in countries of the Global South. The United Kingdom’s response is the ethically dubious decision to build a Wall and to kill or press into labor people who make it there. Defenders like the protagonist, Joseph Kavanagh, are... Read The Wall Summary
The Worst Hard Time, written by New York Times journalist Timothy Egan, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction (2006) and the Washington State Book Award (2006). Egan chronicles the history of the Dust Bowl from the late 1800s to 1939, unfolding the tragedy of errors that led to the environmental and economic disasters of the 1930s. Readers experience historical events through stories of survivors: farmers, cowboys, ranchers, merchants, investors and professionals. Egan chooses survivors... Read The Worst Hard Time Summary
Wallace Stevens is the author of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and he first published the poem in 1917 as a part of the literary anthology Others: An Anthology of New Verse. In 1923, he included the poem in his first collection of poetry, Harmonium, which features many of Stevens’s most well-known poems—poems that continue to appear in anthologies—like “The Snow Man“ and “The Emperor of Ice-Cream.” Stevens was born in Pennsylvania and... Read Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Summary
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is Naomi Klein's fourth book. Published in 2014, it explores the issue of climate change from an anticapitalistic political perspective and considers whether contemporary market-driven policies are adequate for responding to the global crisis. The book won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and was adapted into a documentary by Avi Lewis.Klein is a Canadian author, filmmaker, and activist whose work centers on anticapitalist critique... Read This Changes Everything Summary
Touching the Void is a 1988 memoir by British author Joe Simpson. The book recounts the disastrous, near-fatal attempt of Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, to ascend the West Face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. The book details Simpson’s harrowing ordeal, in which he broke his leg and fell into a crevasse, and how he survived against seemingly insurmountable odds.Simpson’s narrative highlights the resilience of the human spirit and explores the... Read Touching the Void Summary
Published in 1962 in an America just beginning to grapple with the responsibilities of environmental stewardship and the catastrophic cost of technology’s impact on nature, William Stafford’s deceptively simple poem “Traveling Through the Dark” raises difficult—often unanswerable—questions about humanity’s responsibility for the future of nature. Driving a mountain road one night, the speaker comes upon a dead doe, hit by a car and left by the side of the road. While clearing the deer off... Read Traveling through the Dark Summary
Turtle in Paradise is a 2010 historical fiction children’s novel by Jennifer L. Holm. Set in the Florida Keys during the Great Depression, the novel follows an 11-year-old girl’s struggles and successes as she visits her aunt and cousins in the town where her mother grew up. The novel won the Golden Kite Award and is a Newbery Honor Book as well as a Junior Library Guild selection.This guide refers to the 2010 Random House... Read Turtle in Paradise Summary
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a science fiction adventure novel by French author Jules Verne. It was originally published in serialized form in 1869 under the title Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, and later as a book in 1870. In 1873, the first English-language translation was released. The book was highly acclaimed at the time of its publication and was one of several successful novels by Verne. Others include Journey to the... Read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Summary
Unbowed, written by Wangari Maathai, is a memoir of the Kenyan politician and environmental activist who founded the Green Belt Movement. In 2004, Maathai became the first African woman and environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize. First published in 2006, the memoir describes Maathai’s path to activism, which was fueled by a familiarity with and fondness for the Kenyan landscape of her childhood, as well as an early awareness of social injustice. Maathai was born... Read Unbowed Summary
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a modernist novel published in 1947. Set in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, in 1938, it follows the Consul, a former British diplomat with an alcohol addiction, on the day of his death. In addition to the Consul, the small cast of characters includes the Consul’s half-brother, Hugh, his ex-wife, Yvonne, and his friend-turned-enemy, Jacques Laruelle. Malcolm Lowry, who spent time in Mexico and was known to have experienced addiction himself... Read Under the Volcano Summary
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich is a collection of 35 first-person oral accounts of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union. Originally published in Russian in 1997, the book was translated into English by Keith Gessen in 2005; it has been translated into almost every European language. Alexievich, a Belarusian investigative journalist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Voices from Chernobyl in... Read Voices from Chernobyl Summary
Walden opens with Thoreau’s explanation of his two-year independent living project on Walden Pond, which spanned from 1845 to 1847. He illuminates his desire to live a solitary, simple life outside of civilization. Over the course of these two years, Thoreau describes his experiences including his immersion in nature, the process of growing his own food, and the pleasure he derives from contemplating the beauty of the woods. He also reflects on the most basic elements... Read Walden Summary
Where the Lilies Bloom (1969) is a middle-grade historical fiction novel written by married authors Vera Cleaver and Bill Cleaver. The couple collaborated on stories and novels for middle-grade and young adult readers throughout their life, believing that writing for adolescent age groups was a meaningful endeavor. They often wrote about realistic settings and themes, exploring the intricacies of human nature. Where the Lilies Bloom is their most famous work. It is a coming-of-age novel... Read Where the Lilies Bloom Summary
British-American neuroscientist Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (2017) provides an in-depth exploration of the science of sleep health. Walker argues that sleep loss is an epidemic and one of the most serious public health issues of the 21st century. Drawing from a wealth of data and scientific studies, including his own innovative scientific breakthroughs during his time as a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Walker illustrates the... Read Why We Sleep Summary
Wind From an Enemy Sky is a 1978 historical fiction novel by D’Arcy McNickle. It tells the story of the fictional Little Elk tribe in the northwestern United States and their attempts to navigate the advancement of white colonization on their lands. McNickle based the story on his life as a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation. The novel was McNickle’s last and was published posthumously. While it never... Read Wind from an Enemy Sky Summary
Published in 1991, the adventure biography Woodsong recounts novelist Gary Paulsen’s experiences as a dogsled driver, including his participation in the Iditarod race across Alaska. He describes the hard-won lessons he learns, the strange and wondrous things he witnesses, and the love and admiration he feels for the dogs he trains with. Three-time Newbury Honor winner Paulsen wrote more than 200 works, most of them for middle-grade and young adult readers. His books often tell... Read Woodsong Summary
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a horror fiction novel by Max Brooks published in 2006. The book was a critical and commercial success, generally receiving positive reviews and spending several weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. It has sold millions of copies around the world and was subsequently turned into a successful movie starring Brad Pitt, released in 2013, and a highly rated video game, released in... Read World War Z Summary
“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1835 in The New-England Magazine. The story was later included in Hawthorne’s 1846 collection Mosses from an Old Manse. Most of Hawthorne’s fiction is set in New England and focuses on themes of morality, inherent sin of human beings, and anti-Puritan sentiment. In addition to “Young Goodman Brown,” some of his most famous short fiction works include “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1836)... Read Young Goodman Brown Summary
David Baldacci’s Zero Day (2011, Grand Central Publishing) is the 23rd of Balducci’s 44 adult novels and the first of three in his John Puller series. Most of Baldacci’s adult novels are in the suspense and legal thriller genres. Baldacci studied law and worked as an attorney for seven years before publication of his first novel, Absolute Power (1996), which was made into a 1997 film directed by Clint Eastwood. His research for Zero Day... Read Zero Day Summary
