Are you an SEJ member who's authored, co-authored or edited a non-fiction or fiction environmental book (published in 2010) 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 cover image (optional)
5. Internet link to more information (optional) 

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

Non-Fiction

The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World; From the Periodic Table of the Elements

By Sam Kean

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie’s reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? The Periodic Table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it’s also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold, and every single element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. Why did a little lithium help cure poet Robert Lowell of his madness? And how did gallium (Ga, 31) become the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Disappearing Spoon has the answers, fusing science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, discovery, and alchemy, from the Big Bang through the end of time. Little, Brown, 2010. ISBN-10: 0316051640 ISBN-13: 978-0316051644. More information. Sam Kean's website.

Green Morality: Mankind's Role in Environmental Responsibility

By Edward Flattau

Green Morality is a journalist's polemic exploring human beings' ethical relationship with the world around them. The main message of the book is that we have a moral obligation to future generations to leave the planet in as good or better shape than we found it. And the way to achieve that objective is to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. Author Edward Flattau draws heavily from his column writing which he's been at since 1972. The Way Things Are Publications, 2010. ISBN 10:0-9821419-2-0. More information.

How To Boil a Frog

By Jon Cooksey

"How To Boil a Frog" is a comedic documentary about the consequences of planetary overshoot, and what we can do personally to save civilization. Fools Bay Entertainment, 2010. More information.

Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service

By Mark Pendergrast

Inside the Outbreaks is a history of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, whose shoeleather epidemiologists are the front-line disease detectives of the CDC. The EIS has investigated every disease imaginable, from polio and malaria to AIDS and Ebola. As Lawrence Altman has written in the New York Times: "Since its creation in 1951, the Epidemic Intelligence Service has become a bulwark in the nation's defense system against disease, often acting as the public's emergency room. Its doctors have helped identify Legionnaires' disease, Lyme disease, and toxic shock syndrome from superabsorbent tampons; stop outbreaks of diphtheria and other diseases before they could spread uncontrollably; discover the deadly Ebola and Lassa viruses; and trace paralyzing cases of polio to defective batches of the Salk vaccine. Other E.I.S. investigations have led the Food and Drug Administration to remove potentially lethal products from the market. Indeed, the E.I.S. 'may have saved your life, though you were probably unaware of it,' Mark Pendergrast writes in his new book, Inside the Outbreaks, the first history of the program.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. ISBN 978-0-15-101120-9. More information.

Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland

By Jeff Biggers

Winner of the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting and the Delta Award for Literature, Reckoning at Eagle Creek is a historical journey into the secret history of coal mining in the American heartland. Set in the ruins of the author’s strip-mined homestead in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, Biggers delivers a deeply personal portrait of the largely overlooked human and environmental costs of our nation's dirty energy policy over the past two centuries. Reckoning at Eagle Creek digs deep into the tangled roots of the coal industry beginning with the policies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. It chronicles the removal of Native Americans, and the hidden story of legally sanctioned black slavery in the land of Lincoln. It uncovers a century of regulatory negligence, vividly describing the epic mining wars for union recognition and workplace safety, and the devastating environmental consequences of industrial strip-mining. Biggers exposes the fallacy that lies at the heart of this policy and shatters the Big Coal marketing myth that Illinois represents the "Saudi Arabia of coal." Reckoning at Eagle Creek is ultimately an exposé of "historicide," one that traces coal's harrowing legacy through the great American family saga of sacrifice and resiliency and the extraordinary process of recovering our nation's memory. Nation Books/Basic Books, 2010. ISBN-10: 1568584210. ISBN-13: 978-1568584218. More information. Jeff Biggers' website. 

Saved by the Sea: A Love Story with Fish

By David Helvarg

From visiting BP Deepwater platforms in the Gulf of Mexico to bodysurfing Central American War Zones, diving Australia's Great Barrier Reef with his tragically fated love Nancy or being bumped by a whale off Antarctica, Helvarg has lived a life often as endangered as the ocean he now works to protect. Saved by the Sea is the story of this long-time journalist's personal love loss and redemption in the free flowing heart of our blue marble planet. "In David Helvarg's remarkable life as a journalist and activist, his love of the sea has provided him both a cause to fight for and a cure for his ill. Saved by the Sea will help you understand why Helvarg continues to fight for the oceans, and why we all need to," says actor and ocean advocate Ted Danson. St. Martin's Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-312-56706-4.

Fiction

Human Scale

By Kitty Beer

Kitty Beer's new novel, Human Scale, is coming out in April in honor of Earth Day. It's a sequel to What Love Can't Do (2006), the first novel to portray the human consequences of climate change. Boston is mostly under water, seasons have gone haywire, and regional enclaves compete for essential resources. Vita battles to save her daughter from the decrees of the ruling theocracy. At the same time she must confront her husband’s allegiance to authority, and struggle with her attraction to an enigmatic spy. A fully realized, compelling world, conveyed with powerful, lyrical imagery and deep psychological insight. Plain View Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-935514-42-8. More information. Related information.