If the mechanics behind Global Warming has eluded you, or if you’re excited by a few cooking tips or a good old fashioned dystopic novel, then dig in, because we’ve got seven books that will help you start 2011 on a green foot.
The holidays are over and winter has finally set in. What better opportunity to sink into a cozy couch and catch up on your reading? Maybe your New Year’s resolution is to help improve the environment in the Middle East, start a green business, or cooking blog? Here are some resources to help you start the revolution.
Do you know intuitively that biodiversity is important, but don’t have the details to back up your argument?
Are you unclear why fossil fuel discoveries, such as the Leviathan gas field in Israel, are nothing to throw a party over?
Starting with Hot, Flat and Crowded, a great eco starter book, and continuing with French adventures and some cooking tips, our list will help you understand the science behind the rhetoric while simultaneously offering a glimpse into a saner way forward.
Hot, Flat and Crowded by
Thomas L. Friedman
http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/01/11/16033/friedman-hot-flat-crowded/
Start your winter right by getting to know why we need to go green and the advantages of the green revolution. The need for a green revolution is presented through the lenses of business, science, homeland security, and macro-economic stand points. The book addresses the major environmental challenges we are facing today such as energy, poverty, climate change, and loss of biodiversity and proposes ways for world leaders, the planet, and the world to help abate these crises.
Read the Green Prophet review for Hot, Flat and Crowded here
Strategy for Sustainability by
Adam Werbach
Werbach discusses the roles of national corporations and their effect on the environment and the global economy. He uses his “Seven Tenets of a Strategy for Sustainability” to describe the role and consequences of a world with limited resources. He emphasizes the power of modern day cooperation and their need to part of the solution when dealing with the global environmental crises we are approaching.
Read the Green Prophet review for Strategy for Sustainability here
The Final Call With A Questioning Eye
by Leo Hickman
Hickman discusses the effects of tourism on the world’s resources and its effect on local communities and ecology. He balances facts and figures with personal observations and behind-the-scene interviews with bartenders, prostitutes, cruise captains, local people, industry leaders and public officials. Exploring the rights and responsibilities of all concerned, he highlights the socio-economic factors at play in countries aspiring to develop and gain wealth; the increasing uptake of opportunities for tourists; and globalization.
Read the review on Final Call With a Questioning Eye here
Mama Nazima’s Jewish-Iraqi Cuisine
by Rivka Goldman
Come read 100 old-fashioned recipes that evolved out of the centennial Jewish presence in Iraq, plus a synopsis of Jewish history there. Around the recipes are comments and traditional Arab proverbs revealing glimpses of the old Jewish-Iraqi culture. Another is the author’s memories of her mother, to whom she dedicated the book; and a third, Iraqi anti-Semitic persecution culminating in a pogrom in 1941, and the community’s exit from their ancient home in 1950.The recipes themselves are appetizing and easy to follow. The author lays great claim on the nutritional benefits of the food, which is easy enough considering that almost every recipe includes fresh vegetables.
Read the review on Mama Nazima’s Jewish-Iraqi Cuisine here
French Lessons
by Peter Mayle
Mayle describes the travels of a British ex-pat who left Provence to get a better taste of food festivals in other regions. He samples all of the delicacies of the region and experiences a wine tasting that goes on all afternoon and needs “a medicinal bottle of champagne” to cure the resulting hangover. Other adventures include a truffle auction that kicks off at early Mass. A marathon where sweating, cross-dressing runners wait for each other to catch up. And hilariously, the proper etiquette involved in kissing a fellow Frenchman.
Read the review on French Lessons here
Deep Economy
by Bill McKibben
Deep Economy advocates for less economic growth. The central theme is that what we need is Better rather than More. Author Bill McKibben believes, as do a growing number of economists, that we have to choose between one and the other. He writes, “…growth is no longer making most people wealthier, but instead generating inequality and insecurity.”
Read the review on Deep Economy here
Finitude
by Hamish MacDonald
The dystopian future MacDonald writes about in this novel could happen anywhere on Earth, and therefore serves as a potent wake-up call about global warming. On one level, it’s a fun read, and on another, it’s what the future may very well look like.
Read Green Prophet’s review on Finitude here
More green book reviews:
Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Culture, by Richard Foltz
(This list was complied by Green Prophet intern Dorothy Etra)
