Are you an SEJ member who's authored, co-authored or edited a non-fiction or fiction environmental book (published in 2012 or 2013) you'd like included on this page? Movies are also welcome. Please send the following to web content manager Cindy MacDonald:

1. a one-paragraph description
2. name of publisher and year of publication
3. ISBN number
4. .gif or .jpg image of the book cover (optional)
5. Internet link to more information (optional) 

Members' books published in: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and earlier.

Advertise your 2012 or 2013 environmental book in the book-review pages of our quarterly newsletter SEJournal. For only $48 for four issues, keep your book title in front of the membership and subscribers for one full year. Download a form to fax or mail (requires free Adobe Reader ®). SEJ members only.

Non-Fiction

DEERLAND: America’s Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness

By Al Cambronne

The U.S. is now home to 30 million hungry deer — 100 times more than were here a century ago. When we see all those deer out in the woods, most of us believe it’s a measure of the forest’s health. It is, but in exactly the opposite way we think. All across America, overabundant deer routinely devastate ecosystems and alter entire landscapes. DEERLAND traces the story of how we came to favor whitetails over all other wildlife, and asks tough questions about what it will take to restore balance. And are hunters part of the solution, part of the problem, or both? As Cambronne gives readers an insider’s tour of America’s deer-industrial complex, he also asks tough questions about the rapidly changing gear, tactics, and values of today’s hunters — and about what role those hunters will continue to play in 21st Century America. DEERLAND is a timely and insightful look at the single most economically important and problematic wild creature in our midst. Whether you hunt them or watch them, love them or loathe them, and whether you care about the environment, the deer in your back yard, or the shrubbery they just ate, DEERLAND is an eye-opening read that will change forever the way you think about deer and the landscape we share with them. Lyons Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780762780273. More information.

Dirty, Sacred Rivers: Confronting South Asia's Water Crisis

By Cheryl Colopy

Dirty, Sacred Rivers explores South Asia's increasingly urgent water crisis, taking readers on a journey through North India, Nepal and Bangladesh, from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal. The book shows how rivers, traditionally revered by the people of the Indian subcontinent, have in recent decades deteriorated dramatically due to an exploding population, economic progress and gross mismanagement. Dams and ill-advised embankments strangle the Ganges and its sacred tributaries; rivers have become sewage channels. The first person narrative lingers in key places which have become hot spots in the debate over water. These include the megacity Delhi, a paradigm of water mismanagement; Bihar, India's poorest, most crime-ridden state, thanks largely to the blunders of engineers who tried to tame powerful Himalayan rivers with embankments but instead created annual floods and waterlogging; and Kathmandu, the home of one of the most elegant and ancient traditional water systems on the subcontinent, now the site of a water-development boondoggle. Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN13: 9780199845019. ISBN10: 0199845018. More information.

For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It

By Mark Pendergrast

For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It, by SEJ member Mark Pendergrast, is about a fizzy, sugary soft drink, a non-essential product that has had an enormous global impact on culture, the environment, and health. Although many of those impacts have been negative, others have been surprisingly positive. This new edition brings the saga up to date, with allegations that Coca-Cola helped to deplete the water table in India and was a major cause of the obesity epidemic, along with Coke's "halo effect" efforts with safe water, exercise programs, and collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund. Basic Books, 3rd edition, May 2013. ISBN: 978-0-465-0-2917-4. More information.

From Me to We: The Five Transformational Commitments Required to Rescue the Planet, Your Organization and Your Life

By Bob Doppelt

Numerous frameworks exist to guide the changes in practices, technologies, and policies required to address climate disruption, the loss of biodiversity, toxicity, and their social and economic effects. All effective solutions depend on accurate assumptions, perceptions, and belief. Yet few frameworks exist to guide the changes in thinking and behaviors needed to respond effectively to the challenges we face today. Through an integration of psychology, ecology, and climate science, From Me to We describes the transformations in beliefs, assumptions, and perceptions required by each of us personally, each organization, and society as a whole to resolve the climate emergency and many other of today's crises. Those changes add up to a fundamental shift from a focus on meeting our wants and desires by focusing only on 'Me' — ourselves and immediate family — to meeting our needs by focusing on a much broader 'We' — the people and natural systems that make all life — including ours — possible and worthwhile. Greenleaf Publishing (UK), 2012. ISBN-13:978-1-906093-71-6. More information. Contact the author.

Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC's South Coast

By Maleea Acker

In Gardens Aflame, Victoria writer and environmentalist Maleea Acker tells us about the unique and vanishing ecosystem of Garry oak meadows, and the people who have made it their life's work to save oaks and the environment — including the human environment — they depend on. Acker tells us about the Garry oak species and its unique habits and requirements, including its unusual summer dormancy period, when all the surrounding plants are coursing with life. We learn about the scientists, arborists, and Garry oak-loving volunteers who have dedicated themselves to this tree; and about Theophrastus, Humboldt, and their other forebears who are still reshaping our notions of nature and humans' place in it. In the course of Acker's story, we see her fall under the spell of the strange beauty woven by these magnificent trees, and the ecosystems they tower over — until, in the final act, she decides to turn her own backyard into her own version of a Garry oak savannah, defying City Hall and the neighbours, and bringing to a head in 2011 all the issues raised 150 years ago when Europeans first saw the open meadows of Southern Vancouver Island. New Star Books (Vancouver), 2012. ISBN: 9781554200658. More information.

Global Thirst: Water and Society in the 21st Century

By John R. Wennersten

This new book is part of Wennersten's ongoing study of estuaries, rivers and water policy. In an age of misinformation and public apprehension about climate change, droughts, floods, and polluted drinking water, Global Thirst offers a critical perspective on water, its uses, and access, as a major global issue in the 21st Century; it also includes commentary on what kinds of sustainable water options we should be pursuing. Wennersten's analysis of water ranges from Nigeria to India and China to Australia and the United States — it goes a long way towards correcting the popular notion that "there will always be water." This is an ideal book for citizens concerned about the fate of the planet and professionals working in government, the environment, international affairs, and public policy. Dr. Wennersten, author of books on environmental history and public affairs, is emeritus professor of environmental history at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. Schiffer Publications, 2012. ISBN 978-0-7643-3973-8. More information.

How to Raise Chickens (second edition)

By Christine Heinrichs

How to Raise Chickens, second edition, updates the changes that chickens have brought to American backyards since the first edition in 2007. Back then, people laughed when you mentioned chickens. Now, you or your neighbor is probably raising them! This book includes general husbandry information for small flock raising and focuses on the history and lore of standard and traditional chicken breeds. Read Robert Frost's poem about his favorite chicken! Over 200 color pictures. This book will get a novice started and delight the experienced fancier. Voyageur Press, 2013. ISBN-10: 0760343772. ISBN-13: 978-0760343777. More information.

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

By William Souder

On a Farther Shore, a new biography of Rachel Carson coming in September 2012, marks the 50-year anniversary of Carson’s Silent Spring — and by extension, a half-century of the environmental movement. Carson loved the ocean and wrote three books about its mysteries, including the international bestseller The Sea Around Us. But it was with Silent Spring, and its indictment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides such as DDT, that this unassuming biologist transformed our relationship with the natural world. Seeing an inescapable parallel between dangerous chemicals and the then-pervasive radioactive fallout from nuclear-testing, Carson opened a fault line between the gentle ideal of conservation and the more urgent new concept of environmentalism. Rich in historical context, the book also sensitively considers Carson’s romantic friendship with Dorothy Freeman, and her death from cancer in 1964. This is the timely story of one of the great reformers of the twentieth century. Crown, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-307-46220-6. eISBN: 978-0-307-46222-0. More information. Facebook.

Traveling the Power Line: From the Mojave Desert to the Bay of Fundy

By Julianne Couch

In our power-hungry world, all the talk about energy — what’s safe and what’s risky, what’s clean and what’s dirty, what’s cheap and what’s easy — tends to generate more heat than light. What, Julianne Couch wanted to know, is the real story on power production in this country? Approaching the question as a curious consumer, Couch takes us along as she visits nine sites where electrical power is developed from different fuel sources. From a geothermal plant in the Mojave Desert to a nuclear plant in Nebraska, from a Wyoming coal-fired power plant to a Maine tidal-power project, Couch gives us an insider’s look at how power is generated, how it affects neighboring landscapes and the people who live and work there, and how each source comes with its own unique complications. The result is an informed, evenhanded discussion of energy production and consumption on the global, national, regional, local, and — most important — personal level. Knowledge is the real power this book imparts, allowing each of us to think beyond the flip of a switch to the real consequences of our energy use. University of Nebraska Press, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-8032-4506-8 (paperback). More information.

Fiction

Carry the Flame

By Mark Nykanen (pen name James Jaros)

Publishers Weekly calls Carry the Flame "Gutsy," and The Big Thrill, the magazine of the International Thriller Writers, says the book is "Stunning." Carry the Flame is set in the latter part of this century after climate change has triggered a worldwide collapse of natural systems. A band of survivors caravans into the Great American Desert, the wastes of what once was America's heartland. With her daughters at her side, Jessie hopes to find sanctuary in the Arctic, now rumored to be temperate. But the caravan's enemies are powerful and relentless, and will not rest until they possess the band's most precious treasures: their prepubescent female children, a stolen tanker filled with fuel...and a pair of frightened twins, whom the Army of God calls "demon." But the danger in pursuit pales before the horror that lies ahead when Jessie, the marauder-turned-ally Burned Fingers, and the innocents in their care face the savagery, the madness, and the monsters that dwell in the terrifying City of Shade. While Carry the Flame is a sequel to the widely praised Burn Down the Sky, it is also a stand-alone post-apocalyptic tale. Harper Voyager, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-06-201631-7. More information.