Libro.fm Picks: For the Environmentalist

An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By: Ed Yong
Narrated by: Ed Yong
Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong
 
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative... Read more

The Book of Hope

A Survival Guide for Trying Times

Global Icons Series

By: Jane Goodall & Douglas Abrams
Narrated by: Douglas Abrams & Jane Goodall
Length: 6 hours 49 minutes

“Fascinating interview of naturalist Dr Jane Goodall by biographer Douglas Adams. I listened to the Libro.fm edition which is narrated by both. Interesting to learn how she first got interested in studying animal behavior and how the field has changed. Her research at Gombe National Park has given us an in-depth understanding of chimpanzee... Read more

In the Shadow of the Mountain

A Memoir of Courage

By: Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Narrated by: Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
Length: 15 hours 32 minutes

“In the Shadow of the Mountain intertwines the lives of sexual assault survivors with Vasquez-Lavado’s experience leading these survivors to summit Mount Everest. A collective story of perseverance, community, and healing. Read more

The High Sierra

A Love Story

By: Kim Stanley Robinson
Narrated by: Kim Stanley Robinson
Length: 16 hours 30 minutes

A “sublime” and “radically original” exploration of the Sierra Nevadas, the best mountains on Earth for hiking and camping, from New York Times bestselling novelist Kim Stanley Robinson (—Bill McKibben, Gary Snyder).
 
Kim Stanley Robinson first ventured into the Sierra Nevada mountains during the summer of 1973. He returned from that encounter a... Read more

The Intersectional Environmentalist

How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet

By: Leah Thomas
Narrated by: Leah Thomas, Hayden Bishop & Erin Walker
Length: 4 hours 1 minute

From the activist who coined the term comes a primer on intersectional environmentalism for the next generation of activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable change. The Intersectional Environmentalist examines the inextricable link between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and promotes awareness of the fundamental... Read more

Saving Yellowstone

Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America

By: Megan Kate Nelson
Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
Length: 8 hours 22 minutes

“Acclaimed historian, Megan Kate Nelson, delivers an engaging and fascinating book. She examines Reconstruction through the viewfinder of the creation of Yellowstone National Park. A scientific explorer, a banking tycoon and a Native American Chief make up the majority of the threads in the book but there are plenty of other interesting... Read more

Consumed

The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism

By: Aja Barber
Narrated by: Aja Barber
Length: 8 hours 17 minutes

A call to action for consumers everywhere, Consumed asks us to look at how and why we buy what we buy, how it's created, who it benefits, and how we can solve the problems created by a wasteful system. 
We live in a world of stuff. We dispose of most of it in as little as six months after we receive it. The byproducts of our quest to consume are... Read more

Braiding Sweetgrass

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our... Read more

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet

By: Thich Nhat Hanh
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & True Dedication
Length: 9 hours 19 minutes

“When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of interbeing. And at that moment you can have real communication with the Earth… We have to wake up together. And if we wake up together, then we have a chance. Our way of living our life and planning our future has led us into this... Read more

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

By: Nick Offerman
Narrated by: Nick Offerman
Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

A humorous and rousing set of literal and figurative sojourns as well as a mission statement about comprehending, protecting, and truly experiencing the outdoors, fueled by three journeys undertaken by actor, humorist, and New York Times bestselling author Nick Offerman

Nick Offerman has always felt a particular affection for the Land of the... Read more

The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

“The Feather Thief is true crime at its best — a tale starting with the Amazonian explorations of Darwin-era naturalists, rooted in the eccentric sensibilities of Victorian collectors, fueled by the obscure cult of fly-fishing tying, and culminating with a shocking 2009 British Museum heist by a shy American flautist. All of these elements are... Read more

Oak Flat

A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West

By: Lauren Redniss
Narrated by: Lauren Redniss, Darrell Dennis, Kyla Garcia, Kimberly Guerrero, Hillary Huber, Ann Marie Lee, Elizabeth Liang, Crystle Lightning, Jon Lindstrom, A. Martinez, John H. Mayer, Arthur Morey, Tanis Parenteau & Various
Length: 4 hours 15 minutes

“Oak Flat is simultaneously an object of mesmerizing beauty and an urgent book of complete necessity. Lauren Redniss tells the tale of the struggle to preserve a site sacred to the Apache people from a copper mining project that would destroy it. Her vibrant illustrations and careful curation of competing voices convey the high stakes while... Read more

Entangled Life

How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

By: Merlin Sheldrake
Narrated by: Merlin Sheldrake
Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

“An ecological, fungi-based restructuring of your world view given to us as only a brilliant biologist could offer. Sheldrake says, 'Without this fungal web my tree would not exist. Without [...] fungal webs no plant would exist anywhere. All life on land, including my own, depends on these networks.' Read more

How Beautiful We Were

A Novel

By: Imbolo Mbue
Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards, Dion Graham, JD Jackson, Allyson Johnson & Lisa Renee Pitts
Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers.

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, People• ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review,The... Read more

As Long as Grass Grows

The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

By: Dina Gilio-Whitaker
Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism

Through the unique lens of “Indigenized environmental justice,” Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty... Read more

A Terrible Thing to Waste

Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind

By: Harriet A. Washington
Narrated by: Ron Butler
Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

“A terrifying book when it comes down to it, but an important one. Washington is careful and methodical in her statements, emphasizing lives, generations, and ability lost, not merely the wrongs that were committed. If the first step is awareness, then Washington has hopefully pushed us a couple of steps up the stairs. Read more

The Mushroom at the End of the World

On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

By: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 11 hours 6 minutes

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions,... Read more

Two Trees Make a Forest

In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts

By: Jessica J. Lee
Narrated by: Nancy Wu
Length: 6 hours 4 minutes

An exhilarating, anti-colonial reclamation of nature writing and memoir, rooted in the forests and flatlands of Taiwan

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew.

Lee hikes mountains home to... Read more

The Seed Keeper

A Novel

By: Diane Wilson
Narrated by: Kyla García
Length: 10 hours 42 minutes

“The Seed Keeper shimmers like the horizon in the summer heat—depending on how you look at it, it is a stunning historical novel, a paean to the land and the plants that people it, a prayer to Dakota women wading through generational trauma. It is all of these things, and so much more. Wilson deftly weaves together multiple voices to bring the... Read more

The Home Place

Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature

By: J. Drew Lanham
Narrated by: J. Drew Lanham
Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

From the fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist J. Drew Lanham.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else"—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet... Read more