10 books: 10 perspectives on our changing planet

There are many ways to reflect on the environments we live in; from exploring disappearing species to the changing ways we manage land and resources. How we perceive the world can also be influenced by who does the science or number crunching on the information we consume.

Our annual holiday season reading list features some of these different approaches to framing how we’re changing life planet Earth – but also our relationships with them, from how we farm to how storytelling and different belief systems link us to and define how we value landscapes.

It’s a diverse reading list, contributed to by our science staff from across our interdisciplinary departments, from social, economic, geographic, ecological, biochemical, environmental, information and computational sciences.

So, take your pick and settle in with one of our scientists’ and researchers’ recommendations. We hope you enjoy the variety of perspectives they bring.

Nicholas Jubber – The Fairy Tellers

The surprising origins and people behind the world's most influential magical tales: the people who told and re-shaped them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them and were in turn formed by them.

The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure by Katherine Rundell is published by Faber

A little gem of a non-fiction is pretty much perfect if you want a short, prettily written rundown of a number of once-common, often talked about, species. It is more poignant because they are almost all, unfortunately, disappearing.

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, by Thich Nhat Hanh

Sometimes the wise words of people like Thich Nhat Hạnh can be quite good at cutting through some of the complexities of how people (and humanity more broadly) can respond to the environmental crisis.  And most importantly how individuals should not feel that their influence is too small to play an important role in accomplishing necessary system change.

Not Too Late – Changing the climate story from despair to possibility by Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua

Similarly, this is a great selection of writings encouraging action and hope on climate, rather than despair.

Farmer’s Boy by John R. Allan

A book full of brilliant characters, it captures the deep connection between people and land, and highlights the transformation that has occurred in farming in northeast Scotland in just a couple of generations. Has the added benefit for colleagues that live in Aberdeenshire as they will know many of the farms and places described in the book.

The Bushmen of Southern Africa by Sandy Gall

It is a decent description of the original/indigenous San people of Southern Africa. As well as documenting their appalling treatment it covers their belief systems which includes no sense of personal ownership and their sense of leaving resources in their environment for others.

When I lived in South Africa, the last San speaking person in the Drakensberg died, leaving nobody to continue the story of the fabulous rock art.

Programmed Inequality by Marie Hicks

I found it really interesting to read about the influence of women in computer science. In the 1940s – 1960s the UK led the world in computing and was dominated by women. The book explores why this changed in the 1970s to a male-dominated labour force in tech in general, how we’re still living with this, and the impacts it has had in terms of the UK’s competitiveness in this sector.

Invisible Women: exposing data in a world designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez

This is an important topic for researchers, because it shows how gender bias happens in science, even though we work hard to not be biased in our data.

The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. His expansive and deep journey starts with the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean.

The River and the Road by Peter James Goodwin

While only published in 1985, and based on a period of the 1970s, this is a glimpse back to another time, when freshwater pearls were still fished, albeit in increasingly fewer numbers as overfishing took its toll. It’s both the personal adventure of the author, but also a warning signal for the plight of the pearl, which now, even as a protected species, still suffers as climate change and more extreme events impacting our rivers and makes its life cycle ever harder.

For last year’s recommendations, go to:

Take a bookish delve into biodiversity with our top 10 reads | The James Hutton Institute

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post are the views of the author(s), and not an official position of the institute or funder.