Abundant Earth by Eileen Crist

There are some books that change your outlook on life. For me, a chance encounter led me to one of those while working at a state park after college: Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. I credit that book with steering my life toward a career in land conservation—especially wilderness protection. A couple of decades later, Eileen Crist’s Abundant Earth had the same worldview-piercing impact on my life. In many ways, Abundant Earth helped me articulate answers to many questions I found myself regularly asking. What are the root causes of the ecological problems we face, and why does everyone seem to ignore them? What is the path forward to being good neighbors with our wild kin? How does language influence our relationship with the natural world? Answers to these questions can be found in the pages of Crist’s deeply important and radical book. At its core, it’s a call to action for people to become ecological citizens and shift our worldview from a human-centric one to an eco-centric one—and all that it entails. If Leopold influenced my career path towards protecting wild nature, Crist deepened my convictions that this work remains profoundly important.

Recommended by Jon Leibowitz