Cambridge Compiles List of Top 50 Sustainability Must-Reads

Having surveyed graduates and leaders in the field, The University of Cambridge offers a list of 50 of the most influential books written on the environment and sustainability.

If someone were to ask you to name your single favorite book on environmentalism or sustainability, would you be able to respond with a single, standout title that speaks most clearly to your interest and concern for the planet?

Or might you instead scratch your head and mutter "aw, jeez, let's see here" before launching into a list of several personal favorites with no one rising above the others because they're all so good, and so important?

As reported by Juliette Jowit in The Guardian, faculty members at University of Cambridge took the second path, and they enlisted the help of 2,000 of their alumni, described as leaders in global sustainability issues in doing so. The result is The Top 50 Sustainability Books, a compilation of those titles the group of graduates and practitioners in sustainability pointed to as being especially inspirational, influential in the development of their thinking, and most beneficial in illuminating solutions to the world's environmental and economic challenges.

Just as with similarly authoritative-sounding but subjective lists of fun stuff such as the 100 best movies or the top 25 rock and roll guitar solos, the results offer some surprises and a few whispers of controversy. The Guardian's Leo Hickman draws attention to the notable absences of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, and Bill McKibben's The End of Nature. Perhaps the scope was not global enough as determined by the Cambridge group tapped for the task, but I'd be tempted to tag Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert as an unfortunate oversight.

But putting to the side any temptation to let the perfect be the enemy of the very, very good, the resulting list of titles offers a comprehensive and beneficial review of some of the most influential thinking and writing about the environment to have ever been published.

Reflecting the relatively recent, modern phenomenon that is environmentalism, the oldest title among the 50 is Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, and still revered today as among the most important works on conservation. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring from 1962 follows in the publication time line, a critically important work that explored and explained the fate, transport, and effects of dangerous chemicals in ecosystems.

As our knowledge of environmental systems and changing conditions has grown rapidly over recent years, bringing our interest and concern along with the availability of more and more information, several of the 50 listed titles are very recent, having been published just within the last decade.

The entire list is available for review at The Guardian. We'd sure like to hear from you with any comments. Which of these books really spoke to you when you read them?  Do you have a favorite bit of green reading that somehow didn't make the cut? Tell us about it!

Photo courtesy of Nevit Dilmen via Wikimedia Commons