20 Sustainability Books for Your Summer Reading List
The Sustainable Pittsburgh team has compiled some of their favorite reads on the many topics covered under the sustainability umbrella: equity, environmentalism, circular economy, food systems, diversity, and more. Be sure to look for them at your local bookstore or library!
Climate Change & Environment
- The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus The Climate by Naomi Klein
- Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken
- The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming by Eric Holthaus
- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (Bonus: Fiction!)
Social Equity and Diversity
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
- The Tradition by Jericho Brown
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates
- How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Food Systems
- Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
by Lester R. Brown - Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
- In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
Circular Economy
- Green Swans: The Coming Boom In Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington
- The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance by and Michael Braungart
- The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win by Jeffrey Hollender and Bill Breen
Sustainable Communities
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond