My Summer 2026 Reading List

Here is the list of books that I have accumulated these last few months and that I want to read over the summer. Most are about climate and the environment, but I also include Michael Pollan’s latest book “A World Appears”, my friend and teacher Lee Klinger Lesser’s first book “Return to Our Senses”, and “Muskism” that gets deesp into Elon Musk’s worldview and vision for the future. I also highly recommend the novel “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki that I just finished.

In alphabetical order with links:

The Climate Wayfinding- Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home by Katharine K. Wilkinson, co-editor of All We Can Save

Climate Justice- Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and president of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice

Human Nature - Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet by Kate Marvel, climate scientist and science communicator

Muskism- A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodiand & Ben Tarnoff

Return to Our Senses- A path to Stability in an Unstable World by Lee Klinger Lesser

Under the Sky We Make- How to Be Human in a Warming World by Kimberly Nicholas, PhD

The Water Remembers- My Indigeneous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life by Amy Bowers Cordalis

We Are Eating The Earth- The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald

A World Appears- A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan

Happy Reading! Happy Summer!

The Good Ancestor by Daverick Leggett

Every day I walk a hundred years

to the hill where my great great granddaughter sits.

I carry words of blessing

and reach to touch her back.

But feeling me near she turns

sad eyed and heavy with grief

“What was it like?” she asks

“when the great whales swam

when the birds sang you awake

when the rains came soft

and the soil smelt sweet underfoot?”

And the blessings

catch in my throat.

On darker days she turns,

her famished face charred and eyes,

sunk in their bony orbits,

burn with curses.

And the blessings

froth at my mouth

with the poisonous

spume of betrayal.

On the darkest of all days

I walk the hundred years

and find no one there.

Let today be the bright day.

Let today be the bright day

I lay my hand upon her back

And, feeling me near, she turns

and blesses me, saying

“Your love was fierce enough,

sweet ancestor,

your love was fierce enough.