Hudson Riverkeeper and President Alex Matthiessen's Pick:
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Carson’s forecast for the future is terrifying and every bit as relevant today as it was when Silent Spring was first published 45 years ago. Her depiction of the pervasive and unpredictable effects of polluting our environment and our bodies still stands as the most vivid and compelling argument for curbing our pesticide habits and regulating new chemicals before they’re introduced into the marketplace. Silent Spring is a must read for anyone who is concerned about our environment and the health of the planet.

Riverkeeper Boat Captain John Lipscomb's pick:
The Hudson - An Illustrated Guide to the Living River
by Stephen P. Stanne, Roger G. Panetta and Brian E. Forist

Used as one of our main pieces of reference on the Patrol boat. The Hudson - An Illustrated Guide to the Living River is especially helpful for its sections on natural history. “It’s like a glass bottom boat. A view point you can’t find anywhere else.”

Riverkeeper Staff Member Allison Chamberlain's pick:

Hold Your Water: 68 Things You Need to Know to Keep Our Planet Blue
by Steve Creech and Wyland Foundation

Hold Your Water is a fantastic and interesting book which offers various ways that the “ordinary” person can help conserve water. Written in a witty and whimsical manner, Hold Your Water shows not only how water has changed, but also how you can change to help preserve one of our most precious resources–water.

Riverkeeper Staff Member, Renee Cho's pick:

Fidelity
by Grace Paley

Poet and activist Grace Paley completed this collection of poems just before her death in 2007. Although these poems are not specifically about the environment, Paley often uses nature to evoke the poignant complexity and struggle of life and growing older. Her poem “Suddenly There’s Poughkeepsie” is an ode to the magnificent Hudson River.

Staff Member Teresa Walsh's pick

I loved The Lorax when I was young and now I love reading it to my 7 year-old. It is a wonderful introduction to children about how caring for the earth is everyone's responsibility. "UNLESS someone like you...cares a whole awful lot...nothing is going to get better...It's not."

Riverkeeper Board Member William Abranowicz

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

We buy, use, and dispose. But what if there were another way? Cradle to Cradle proposes a new paradigm whereby a product's reuse is built into it from the beginning -- for example, this book's plastic "paper."

Staff Member Karen Tumelty's Pick:

Human Experiment:
My Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2
by Jane Poynter

In 1991, Jane Poynter and seven others moved into Biosphere 2--a three-acre hermetically sealed environment--for a two-year stay. Planned as an exercise to prove that humans could live under the necessary conditions for survival in bases on the Moon or Mars and to conduct experiments to improve the understanding of ecosystems, Biosphere 2 also became a compelling study of human nature.

Co-Director of Pace University School of Law Environmental Litigation Clinic Karl Coplan's Pick:

Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning
by George Monbiot


What does a developed nation need to do to reduce its carbon emissions by the 90% necessary to prevent catastrophic global warming? Heat comes up with a program -- not without painful sacrifice -- that would get us there without our having to give up the essentials of 21st century existence. Monbiot goes through each of the major carbon sources -- residential heating, electricity, transportation, and some industries -- and proposes achievable 90% carbon reductions for each with proven technologies. This book is a must-read for anyone who takes global warming seriously and wants to be part of the solution.