Book picks similar to
The Comedy of Survival: Literary Ecology and a Play Ethic by Joseph W. Meeker
philosophy
non-fiction
science
ecology
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and our Health—and a Vision for Change
Annie Leonard - 2010
Leonard examines the “stuff” we use everyday, offering a galvanizing critique and steps for a changed planet.The Story of Stuff was received with widespread enthusiasm in hardcover, by everyone from Stephen Colbert to Tavis Smiley to George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America, as well as far-reaching print and blog coverage. Uncovering and communicating a critically important idea—that there is an intentional system behind our patterns of consumption and disposal—Annie Leonard transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet.From sneaking into factories and dumps around the world to visiting textile workers in Haiti and children mining coltan for cell phones in the Congo, Leonard, named one of Time magazine’s 100 environmental heroes of 2009, highlights each step of the materials economy and its actual effect on the earth and the people who live near sites like these.With curiosity, compassion, and humor, Leonard shares concrete steps for taking action at the individual and political level that will bring about sustainability, community health, and economic justice. Embraced by teachers, parents, churches, community centers, activists, and everyday readers, The Story of Stuff will be a long-lived classic.
The Carbon Bubble: What Happens to Us When It Bursts
Jeff Rubin - 2015
Since 2006 and the election of the 1st Harper government, the vision of Canada's future as an energy superpower has driven the political agenda, as well as the fast-paced development of Alberta's oil sands and the push for more pipelines across the country to bring that bitumen to market. Anyone who objects is labeled a dreamer, or worse--an environmentalist: someone who puts the health of the planet ahead of the economic survival of their neighbours. In The Carbon Bubble, Jeff Rubin compellingly shows how Harper's economic vision for the country is dead wrong. Changes in energy markets in the US--where domestic production is booming while demand for oil is shrinking--are quickly turning Harper's dream into an economic nightmare. The same trade and investment ties to oil that pushed the Canadian dollar to record highs are now pulling it down, and the Toronto Stock Exchange, one of the most carbon-intensive stock indexes in the world--with over 25 percent market capitalization in oil and gas alone--will be increasingly exposed to the rest of the world's efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Rubin argues that there is a lifeline to a better future. The very climate change that will leave much of the country's carbon unburnable could at the same time make some of Canada's other resource assets more valuable: our water and our land. In tomorrow's economy, he argues, Canada won't be an energy superpower, but it has the makings of one of the world's great breadbaskets. And in the global climate that the world's carbon emissions are inexorably creating, food will soon be a lot more valuable than oil.
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
Joshua Piven - 1999
Volcanoes. Sharks. Quicksand. Terrorists. The pilot of the plane blacks out and it's up to you to land the jet. What do you do? The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook is here to help: jam-packed with how-to, hands-on, step-by-step, illustrated instructions on everything you need to know FAST-from defusing a bomb to delivering a baby in the back of a cab. Providing frightening and funny real information in the best-selling tradition of the Paranoid's Pocket Guide and Hypochondriac's Handbook, this indispensable, indestructible pocket-sized guide is the definitive handbook for those times when life takes a sudden turn for the worse. The essential companion for a perilous age. Because you never know...
The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature
David Suzuki - 1997
But what are the real needs that must be satisfied to live rich, fulfilling lives? This is the question David Suzuki explores in this wide-ranging study. Suzuki begins by presenting the concept of people as creatures of the Earth who depend on its gifts of air, water, soil, and sun energy. He shows how people are genetically programmed for the company of other species, and suffer enormously when we fail to live in harmony with them. And he analyzes those deep spiritual needs, rooted in nature, that are also a crucial component of a loving world. Drawing on his own experiences and those of others who have put their beliefs into action, The Sacred Balance is a powerful, passionate book with concrete suggestions for creating an ecologically sustainable, satisfying, and fair future by rediscovering and addressing humanity’s basic needs.
Client Earth
James Thornton - 2017
Every new year is the hottest in human history, while forest, reef, ice, tundra, and species are disappearing forever. It is easy to lose all hope.Who will stop the planet from committing ecological suicide? The UN? Governments? Activists? Corporations? Engineers? Scientists? Whoever, environmental laws need to be enforceable and enforced. Step forward a fresh breed of passionately purposeful environmental lawyers. They provide new rules to legislatures, see that they are enforced, and keep us informed. They tackle big business to ensure money flows into cultural change, because money is the grammar of business just as science is the grammar of nature.At the head of this new legal army stands James Thornton, who takes governments to court, and wins. And his client is the Earth.With Client Earth, we travel from Poland to Ghana, from Alaska to China, to see how citizens can use public interest law to protect their planet. Foundations and philanthropists support the law group ClientEarth because they see, plainly and brightly, that the law is a force all parties recognize. Lawyers who take the Earth as their client are exceptional and inspirational. They give us back our hope.
The Research Methods Knowledge Base
William Trochim - 1999
It can be used in a variety of disciplines and is ideal for an introductory comprehensive undergraduate or graduate level course. Through its conversational, informal style it makes material that is often challenging for students both accessible and understandable. The Research Methods Knowledge Base, 3e covers everything from the development of a research question to the writing of a final report, describing both practical and technical issues of sampling, measurement, design and analysis.
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret Philosophy for a Happy Healthy Long Life with Joy and Purpose Every Day
Marie Xue
Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that will make your life worth living? Is it the large amount of money that you have in the bank? The prestigious education that you have? The family and friends that surround you? Or your spiritual belief that there is someone greater than you in the world? Most people will spend their entire lifetimes trying to figure it out, but only a few will have the privilege of really understanding and experiencing themselves what it means to live a fulfilled life. Over the past years, we’ve seen many life philosophies take center stage, all claiming to hold to secret to happiness and fulfillment. While all of them may have very convincing premises, only one truly stands out. Ikigai, or the Japanese concept of finding your purpose, is the key to living a meaningful life. If there’s one people group who have mastered the art of living - and living well, it’s definitely the Okinawans of Japan. Famous for being the world’s longest-living people, they attribute their joy and contentment to finding their ikigai. It’s the reason why they live longer, happier, and better lives than the rest of us. So how does knowing your ikigai change your life? And what should you do to help you uncover your ikigai? Well, you’ll discover all that and more after you’ve listened to this audiobook. This audiobook is packed with helpful insights that will change not just the way you think, but also the way you live. You’ll learn how to slow down and let go of the things that stop you from finding your ultimate purpose. This audiobook will also give you the blueprint to living the life that you always wanted so you won’t have to feel your life is meaningless ever again. I hope that through this audiobook, you will see joy, meaning, and purpose in every single day of your life.©2018 Zen Mastery (P)2018 Zen Mastery
Power Moves
NOT A BOOK - 2019
Private corner offices and management by decree are out, as is unquestioned trust in the government and media. These former pillars of traditional power have been replaced by networks of informed citizens who collectively wield more power over their personal lives, employers, and worlds than ever before. So how do you navigate this new landscape and come out on top? Adam Grant, Wharton organizational psychologist and New York Times best-selling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B, went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the epicenter of power, and sat down with thought leaders from around the world, to find out.In interviews with two dozen leaders and thinkers - from top executives at Google, GM, Slack, and Goldman Sachs, to the CEO of the Gates Foundation and NASA's former chief scientist - Grant shares hard-earned insight on how to succeed in this new era of hyper-linked power. He also explores how it's reshaping everything from how employees work to how employers manage their workers, from how women rise in the office to how scientists influence policy.The combination of captivating interviews, compelling data, and Grant's unmistakably incisive and actionable analysis results in an inspiring crash course from the frontlines on the changing nature of power today.
The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
Matthew B. Crawford - 2015
Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind.We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self.Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology, and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the coming to fruition of certain assumptions at the root of Western culture that are profoundly at odds with human nature.The World Beyond Your Head makes sense of an astonishing array of common experience, from the frustrations of airport security to the rise of the hipster. With implications for the way we raise our children, the design of public spaces, and democracy itself, this is a book of urgent relevance to contemporary life.
We Learn Nothing
Tim Kreider - 2012
We watch him navigate a fraught relationship with a lonely uncle in jail who—as he degenerates into madness— continues to plead for the support of his conflicted nephew. And we cringe as he gets outed as a “moby” at a Tea Party rally. In moments like these, we can’t help but ask ourselves: How far would we go for our own family members, and when is someone simply too far gone to save? Are there truly “bad people,” and if so, should we change them? With a perfect combination of humor and pathos, these essays, peppered with Kreider’s signature cartoons, leave us with newfound wisdom and a unique prism through which to examine our own chaotic journeys through life.Uncompromisingly candid, sometimes mercilessly so, these comically illustrated essays are rigorous exercises in self-awareness and self-reflection. These are the conversations you have only with best friends or total strangers, late at night over drinks, near closing time.
Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?
Trent Horn - 2020
Some think it could be the answer to greed, and globalism. Some even argue that it’s the best way to obey Christ’s command to help the poor. Let’s give socialism a fresh chance, they say. A democratic socialism this time, friendly to religion and ordered to the common good, as the Church says the economy should be. In Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?, Trent Horn and Catherine R. Pakaluk refute this tempting but false notion. Drawing on Scripture, history, Catholic social teaching, and basic economic reality, they show beyond a doubt that Catholicism and socialism are utterly incompatible. Along the way, they debunk many of the common claims used to keep afloat the fantasy of a Christian-socialist hybrid, including: -Since the early Christians kept their property in common, so should we. -Jesus would be in favor an economic system that guarantees everyone food, health care, and education. -The Church teaches that Catholics must find a “third way” between the extremes of Communism and capitalism. -Socialism would work if it were just done right, like in Sweden. Although there is no one “Catholic” economic system, Can a Catholic Be a Socialist? helps you understand commonsense economic principles that are truly in line with the Faith. For we all should work for an economy that gives life, fostering prosperity and the common good while providing opportunities to practice temperance and charity.
The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages
J. Thomas Wren - 1995
Writings by Plato, Aristotle, Lao-tzu and others demonstrate that the challenges of leadership are as old as civilization. Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Ghandi, and W.E.B. Du Bois provide a wide range of insights into the eternal practice and problems of leadership. Modern masters of leadership such as James MacGregor Burns, John Kotter, and Warren Bennis join such leading practitioners as Max De Pree and Roger B. Smith in discussing contemporary issues in leadership theory and practice.
Climate: A New Story
Charles Eisenstein - 2018
With an entire chapter unpacking the climate change denier’s point of view, he advocates for expanding our exclusive focus on carbon emissions to see the broader picture beyond our short-sighted and incomplete approach. The rivers, forests, and creatures of the natural and material world are sacred and valuable in their own right, not simply for carbon credits or preventing the extinction of one species versus another. After all, when you ask someone why they first became an environmentalist, they’re likely to point to the river they played in, the ocean they visited, the wild animals they observed, or the trees they climbed when they were a kid. This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth. Freeing ourselves from a war mentality and seeing the bigger picture of how everything from prison reform to saving the whales can contribute to our planetary ecological health, we resist reflexive postures of solution and blame and reach toward the deep place where commitment lives.
The Little Book of Big Ideas: 150 Concepts and Breakthroughs that Transformed History (Little Books)
Daniel Smith - 2017
'Big' ideas are those concepts and theories that have radically transformed our understanding of the world we live in, our place in that world and the ways we have shaped the past and will shape the future. They are the ideas that have had a huge impact on human civilization - and they come from all disciplines of human ingenuity.Topics covered range widely and include Creation Mythology, Existentialism, The Elements, Relativity, Space Travel, Geometry, Ethics, Behaviourism, Genetics, Warfare, The Nation State, Anarchism, Capitalism, Classical Art and Architecture, The Renaissance - and much more.This concise, accessible and multi-faceted book provides an essential introduction to 150 of the most important principles of Western thought.
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic
Madsen Pirie - 2006
Each entry deals with one fallacy, explaining what the fallacy is, giving and analysing an example, outlining when/where/why the particular fallacy tends to occur and finally showing how you can perpetrate the fallacy on other people in order to win an argument. Originally published to great acclaim in 1985 as "The Book of Fallacy", this is a classic brought up-to-date for a whole new generation.