Ecocentric Book List


Appreciating and living indigenous/traditional wisdom

  • Abram D (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous. Pantheon Books, New York, NY, USA.
  • Forbes J (1979) Columbus and Other Cannibals. Harper & Row, New York, NY, USA.
  • Mander J (1992) In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA, USA.
  • Mathews F (2005) Reinhabiting Reality: Towards a Recovery of Culture. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, USA.
  • Rose DB (2009) Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in Australian Aboriginal Culture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
  • Snyder G (2010) The Practice of the Wild. Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Cultivating natural enchantment

  • Curry P (2019) Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life. Floris Books, Edinburgh, UK.
  • Hepburn RW (1984) ‘Wonder’ and Other Essays. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, UK.
  • Kohák E (1987) The Ember and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.

Defending wild places

  • Abbey E (1968) Desert Solitaire. Ballantine Books, New York, NY, USA.
  • Butler T, ed. (2002) Wild Earth: Wild Ideas for a World out of Balance. Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Foreman D (2004) Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA.
  • Turner J (1996) The Abstract Wild. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, USA.
  • Wuerthner G, Crist E and Butler T, eds. (2014) Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. Island Press, Washington, DC, USA.

Inhabiting Places

  • Basso KH (1996) Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
  • Harvey G (2005) Animism: Respecting the Living World. Hurst & Company, London, UK.
  • Rowe S (1990) Home Place: Essays on Ecology. NeWest Press, Edmonton, Canada.
  • Thoreau HD (1991) Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Vintage Books, New York, NY, USA.

Thinking about modernity through an ecocentric lens

  • Bateson G (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Ballantine Books, New York, NY, USA.
  • Plumwood V (2001) Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. Routledge, London, UK.
  • Rowe S (2006) Earth Alive: Essays on Ecology. NeWest Press, Edmonton, Canada.

Nurturing an ecological ethic

  • Berry T (1999) The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. Bell Tower, New York, NY, USA.
  • Crist E (2019) Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.
  • Curry P (2011) Ecological Ethics: An Introduction. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
  • Evernden N (1985) The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada.
  • Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.
  • Mathews F (2021) The Ecological Self (Routledge Classics). Routledge, London, UK.
  • Naess A (1989) Ecology, Community and Lifestyle. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
  • Plumwood V (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge, London, UK.
  • Sessions G, ed. (1995) Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism. Shambhala Publications, Boston, MA, USA.
  • Sylvan R and Bennett D (1994) The Greening of Ethics: From Human Chauvinism to Deep-Green Theory. White Horse Press, Cambridge, UK.

Understanding human overpopulation

  • Cafaro P and Crist E, eds. (2012) Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, USA.
  • Hedberg T (2020) The Environmental Impact of Overpopulation: The Ethics of Procreation. Routledge, London, UK.

Advocating rights for the more-than-human world

  • Boyd D (2017) The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution that Could Save the World. ECW Press, Toronto, Canada.
  • Cullinan C (2002) Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice. Green Books, Totnes, UK.

Taking direct action

  • Carson R (1962) Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, USA.
  • Jensen D (2006) Endgame. Volumes 1 and 2. Seven Stories Press, New York, NY, USA.

Reassessing technology and ecological limits

  • Greer JM (2009) The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, Canada.