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The BookShelf features monthly reviews of the latest environmental and energy books of interest to journalists, as well as an occasional question-and-answer in which published authors offer insight into the motivations behind their work and provide advice to environmental reporters and writers.

For questions and comments, or to suggest future BookShelf reviews, or to offer to review a book, email the SEJournal BookShelf Editor Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com.

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November 19, 2025

  • The Cost of Losing Our ‘Sacred Acres’

    In “We Are Eating the Earth,” author Michael Grunwald explains masterfully how good intentions have led us astray over our food system and climate change, writes BookShelf editor Tom Henry. Whether it’s our obsession with meat, myths about biofuels and regenerative agriculture, or feel-good ideas based on bad science, Grunwald argues it’s time for a fundamental shift in values.

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October 22, 2025

  • Toxic Fashion — A ‘Between the Lines’ Author Q&A

    A simple query about harmful chemicals in airline attendant uniforms started sustainable fashion writer Alden Wicker down a reporting path that uncovered a long history of toxic fashion, took her to India and ultimately inspired her award-winning book, “To Dye For.” In this BookShelf interview, Wicker talks about the challenges, the surprises and the choices made in telling this little-known story.

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September 24, 2025

  • Sunshine State Weirdness, With a Solid Dose of Environment

    The story behind the story that captures the “real” Florida is the essence of a new volume from veteran journalist and author Craig Pittman. BookShelf editor Tom Henry writes that “Welcome to Florida: True Tales from America’s Most Interesting State” not only taps into the state’s rich vein of the weird but offers a hefty dose of environmental topics, from climate change to manatees.

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July 9, 2025

  • Solutions — and Death — in the Rainforest

    A project begun to explore ways to protect the Amazon seemed to end with the murder of the journalist who conceived it, along with his guide and research partner. But others picked up the mantle and completed a volume exploring ways to save this precious and rapidly disappearing ecosystem. BookShelf reviewer Elyse Hauser on how this unusual book tries to meet that promise.

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May 28, 2025

  • Life on Mars and Other Space Oddities

    When an ecologist and a cartoonist team up to explore the realities of colonizing Mars, the result is a humorous and highly informative book on whether humans are truly up to settling space. They detour into the intimacies of zero-gravity intimacy and the challenges of ensuring a food supply. From BookShelf contributing editor Melody Kemp, a review of “A City on Mars.”

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April 9, 2025

  • How the Potomac Imparts the Capital’s Story

    The Potomac is one of the most prominent rivers in the United States, a defining ecological feature of Washington, D.C., at the same time it reveals the city’s history of racial inequality and disenfranchisement. Writer, historian, educator and herbalist Charlotte Taylor Fryar recounts that tale in her ambitious “Potomac Fever,” reviewed in the latest BookShelf by contributing editor Jennifer Weeks, herself a Washington native.

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March 12, 2025

  • With Climate, an Undercurrent of Violence

    In his ambitious first book, “The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence,” journalist Peter Schwartzstein explores how climate change explains conflict, even war. BookShelf editor Tom Henry calls it a deeply researched volume that makes a strong case for the connections between global warming, political instability and violence, not just in poorer regions but for the richer West as well.

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February 5, 2025

  • The Bounty of the Gift Economy

    Bestselling Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her new book, exalts a simple berry that helps sustain the life around it, and in doing so exemplifies the economic power of giving. “The Serviceberry” explores the traditions of the gift economy and its potential to be nurtured alongside the market economy. The latest BookShelf from contributor Jenny Weeks.

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January 8, 2025

  • Trauma Specialist Offers Ospreys As ‘Gateway Drug’ to Nature

    Therapist and artist Pamela Lowell spent several months observing and banding ospreys, but rather than offer the experience up as a scientific account, she turns it into a lighthearted memoir that aims to explore and explain a range of wildlife and environmental issues through art, insight and empathy. BookShelf editor Tom Henry has a review.

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November 27, 2024

  • The Resilient Sea Turtle, Beset by Threats

    Sea turtles are in decline across the globe, victims of coastal development, algal blooms and, perhaps cruelest of all, plastic pollution. Marine biologist Christine Figgener, in a new book part memoir and part field guide, recounts the less than glamorous but rewarding work to spare them extinction, from arduous field work to viral video epiphanies. BookShelf editor Tom Henry reviews “My Life With Sea Turtles.”

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