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In the Spirit of Right and Respectful Relations
In 2023, a group of Pacific Northwest tribal leaders met on Orcas Island off the coast of Washington State for conversations about living in the spirit of right and respectful relations with creation, history and the law, identity, honor and nature. This book is the result.
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This Is an Uprising
This Is an Uprising examines the history, structure and organization of nonviolent protest. The authors make the case that both structure-based organizations and momentum-driven movements are essential to achieving lasting change.
Continue readingNonfiction November 2025: New to My TBR
It’s time to wrap up Nonfiction November with one final post about all the books we’ve learned about this year that we hope to read next year.
Continue readingNonfiction November 2025 Week 4: Diverse Perspectives
Week 4 of Nonfiction November is all about Diverse Perspectives, about seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Or in my case, through the “eyes” of a river.
Continue readingNonfiction November 2025 Week 3: Book Pairings
The topic for week 3 of Nonfiction November is Book Pairings: pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title that are linked together in some way.
This one’s a little tough for me because I don’t read much fiction. But let’s give it a go.
Continue readingNonfiction November 2025 Week 2: Choosing Nonfiction
It’s Week 2 of Nonfiction November and the topic is Choosing Nonfiction. What topics do we read about, and what have we found reading outside our usual genres?
Continue readingAn Evening with Timothy Snyder
I recently attended a public lecture in Seattle given by historian and author Timothy Snyder about his latest book On Freedom. Here’s my summary of his remarks.
Continue readingNonfiction November 2025 Week 1: Your Year in Nonfiction
It’s time once again for Nonfiction November, an annual celebration by and for nonfiction book bloggers, and anyone else who’d like to drop by. In Week 1 we look back and celebrate the books we’ve read over the last 12 months.
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Blueprint for Revolution
Are you feeling overwhelmed by rising oppression and autocracy around the world? Whether you’re fighting a dictator or just trying to improve your neighborhood, Blueprint for Revolution is a worthwhile, helpful, even inspiring book. It teaches you how to organize and carry out nonviolent action to achieve political change.
Continue readingUtah and Four Corners Road Trip 2025
My wife and I recently finished a wonder-filled twelve-day road trip through Utah and the Four Corners region of the US Southwest. This is an incredible part of the country, and I wanted to share some of our experiences and a tiny sample of our photos.
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The Fifth Season
The Fifth Season takes place on a geologically unstable world where there’s a catastrophic “fifth season” of eruptions and earthquakes every few hundred years. It tells the story of one woman’s quest to find her abducted daughter during an especially destructive season. Rich, vivid and highly inventive.
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Is a River Alive?
In this fabulously written book, Robert Macfarlane journeys to rivers in three very different landscapes — the cloud-forests of Ecuador, the city of Chennai, India, and the wilderness of northern Quebec — seeking answers to the question are rivers alive and what would it mean if they were?
Continue readingMy Testimony at the EPA
The EPA is holding virtual public hearings this week on its proposal to rescind the 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. If they get away with it, this will gut most greenhouse gas regulations in the US. Here’s what I said to them.
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The Simple Path to Wealth
Many people aspire to financial freedom. Few actually achieve it. In The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins lays out a roadmap to financial independence. Whether you want to retire comfortably or just build up some “F-You Money,” The Simple Path to Wealth can show you how.
Continue readingThe EPA’s “Dagger to the Heart” of US Climate Regulation
On August 1, 2025, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced it was proposing to reconsider its 2009 endangerment finding about greenhouse gas emissions. “Reconsidering” here means rescind, revoke, roll back. In this post I look at why this action is a dagger to the heart of greenhouse gas regulation.
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The Coming Wave
AI and biotechnology could solve humanity’s toughest problems — or trigger chaos, collapse, and dystopia. Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave warns we’re not ready. Can we contain what we’ve unleashed? This thoughtful book explores the risks, contradictions, and urgent questions posed by tomorrow’s most powerful technologies.
Continue readingObligations of States in Respect of Climate Change
There was a small glimmer of good news on climate change last week: The International Court of Justice ruled that nation states have legal obligations under climate treaties and customary international law to protect “the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”
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Nexus
Why are humans so good at acquiring information and power but not wisdom? In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari explores how human information networks enable large numbers of people to cooperate over great distances and how those networks often prioritize order over truth and wisdom. AI could make matters even worse.…
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The Trees Are Speaking
The Trees Are Speaking is a wonderful book about the old-growth salmon forests of Oregon, Washington, Vancouver Island and Maine and about the people trying save them. It explores the beautiful yet surprising connection between trees and salmon that sustains these forests and may very well help sustain us too.…
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How the World Made the West
How the World Made the West tells the story of surprisingly complex relationships of contact, trade and competition among small city states around the Mediterranean and Middle East starting around 4,000 years ago. In doing so, Josephine Quinn challenges conventional ideas about how civilizations develop.
Continue readingThe Carbon Footprint of Using ChatGPT
There’s a growing concern that our increasing use of artificial intelligence is putting a strain on electricity grids around the world. More use of AI means companies like Google, OpenAI, and Meta are building more data centers stuffed with more servers gobbling up more power. AI tools like ChatGPT are…
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Abundance
Ever since the November 2024 election, Democrats, liberals, progressives – whatever you want to call them – have been doing some deep soul searching, asking themselves, “How on Earth could we have lost to Donald Trump, again?” Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, offers an inspiring framework for finding…
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The Year Without Summer
The eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815 is the largest known eruption of the last 2,000 years. It knocked weather patterns across Europe and the eastern US out of kilter. Crops failed. Unrest followed. The Year Without Summer details Tambora’s impact on people, economics, politics and climate.
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Medicine Wheel for the Planet
Medicine Wheel for the Planet is equal parts autobiography and ecology. Jennifer Grenz, an Indigenous ecologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, tells the deeply personal story of her struggle to bridge the worlds of her Indigenous ancestry and knowledge and her Western scientific training,
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What If We Get It Right?
What If We Get It Right? is a different kind of climate book. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson interviewed twenty people – scientists, activists, journalists, policy experts, entrepreneurs, and artists – for their visions of the future. They discuss what the world might look like if we implement the climate solutions we…
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