From gigantic Burmese pythons spreading like wildfire in Florida to Asian carp threatening to infiltrate the Great Lakes, invasive species are an ever-growing global issue. Using a combination of humor, story-telling, and outstanding interviews, Leslie Anthony manages to make an incredibly technical topic easily digestible and enjoyable in “The Aliens Among Us: How Invasive Species Are Transforming the Planet – and Ourselves.”

His 2017 book focuses primarily on North American cases of invasive animals, pests, and plants. One of those cases is the invasion of Burmese python in the Florida Everglades. Anthony highlights how the species boomed from small numbers let loose by exotic animal owners to “estimates of up to 150,000 pythons now living and multiplying freely in the Everglades.” Anthony also explains how this “pet” was not a huge public concern until a python killed a two-year-old child outside her Tampa home. Finally, laws were implemented against owning or importing this animal without permits. The ban raised public awareness and concern for the number of escapee pythons. It was lost on none that, “The murderous pet was the same species now proliferating in the wilds of the state’s southern tier.”

Burmese Python in Florida. Source: Orlando Weekly

Anthony is an author and a journalist with a background in zoology. His writing is infused with just the right amount of humorous anecdotes, wordplay, and cold hard facts to be accessible for anyone. We jump suddenly from an interview about the stressful creeping of Asian carp up the Mississippi River to a laugh-inducing depiction of a volunteer and the author struggling to rip the stems of Scotch broom out of the ground in Whistler, Canada.

Large Scotch broom plant. Source: United States National Parks Service

Just like eating broccoli with cheese on top, this book tricks you into digesting something good for you while still enjoying its consumption. It immerses the reader in Anthony’s experiences while educating them about the dangers of non-native invasions for the biodiversity, health, and human enjoyment of natural spaces. He explores the enormity of this topic, citing that “these organisms not only have been physically dislocated to new lands from the ecosystems in which they evolved but also, as this book avers, have infiltrated both the public psyche and most institutions in their adopted homes.”

Throughout the book, we are reunited with familiar faces like that of Nick Mandrak, a scientist at the Canada Center for Inland Waters. Our first interaction with Mandrak is hearing his jokes about the “brutalist architecture” of the building and how the mafia must have made loads of money with the Canadian concrete firms of the 60s. Mandrak points out that this revelation apparently, “explains everything about Quebec.” This type of banter is another line that runs continuously throughout the book, providing much needed comic relief while reading such sometimes depressing accounts.

The book’s main five chapters follow the chronology of the invasion curve. The invasion curve shows the exponential growth of invasive species in a new ecosystem over time, starting slowly, increasing rapidly, and eventually plateauing when it reaches its highest sustainable population size. On Anthony’s graph, he uses the sections “prevent,” “eradicate,” “contain,” and “manage” (long-term control on the graph below) to indicate the appropriate type of approach at each stage of the curve.

An invasion curve similar to the one presented in “The Aliens Among Us” Credit: Florida Invasive Species Partnership

The fifth chapter of the book focuses on the reactive approach to addressing invasives. Anthony introduces the use of mitigation strategies. For example, creating sport-hunting events to kill the pythons in Florida or putting out poisoned foods for excessive street cat populations in Australia, the corresponding subsection cleverly titled “Eradicat-er.”

Anthony wraps up the book by addressing the criticism of invasive species regulation. Folks like botanist Ken Thompson argue that invasive species are just a part of, “natural intercontinental movement of various biological taxa.” He also gives updates on the most recent 2016 happenings for each of the stories that he had introduced throughout the book.

One portion that stuck with me throughout the book was the detail-rich explanation about the simple ways that species can be unwittingly trans-located by humans. Whether on our clothes, our shoes, under our vehicles, or another way, humans have a significant role in invasions, and therefore the changes to our treasured surroundings.

Anthony describes how a peaceful day in a Canadian national park, ending at home by Whistler Mountain, undoubtedly caused the spread of multiple species over 100 km. He immediately zooms in on the micro-interactions he had with his surroundings that caused the spread. He recalls seeing the tiny ant crawl across the floor of his car while getting gas and shaking off the dirt from the sneakers he wore on the trip into his home’s flower bed before going inside. The impact of easy-to-overlook actions like these shows how difficult it has become to contain invasive species.

“The Aliens Among Us” is a fundamental and entertaining read for anyone who wants to understand the stakes of the environmental issue that will be infiltrating our lives more and more in the years to come. As Leslie Anthony expresses at the end of the book, “It was no longer possible to ignore it.” Once you read this book, you’ll see invasive species everywhere, and more importantly, you’ll want to do something about it.

What does a New York neighborhood have in common with an Oklahoma mining town? Both are EPA Superfund sites, with enough environmental hazards to warrant federal intervention. Earth A.D. documents these two environmental disasters, born out of the Industrial Revolution, and how their legacies poisoned neighboring communities for decades.

One story Earth A.D. tells is about Tar Creek, OK, once the largest source of lead and zinc, today contaminated by toxic metals lead, cadmium and arsenic, resulting in 70% of children in the community having lead poisoning. The second story Earth A.D. tells is about Greenpoint, NY a community layered with contaminates, leading to cancer and other rare diseases. Telling these stories together reveals how massive-scaled, complexly intertwined environmental problems vary dramatically based on race, access to wealth, and local politics.

Author and filmmaker Michael Nirenberg weaves together stories of these disasters through interviews. This oral history is rich with stories from affected citizens, and political and environmental leaders. Former school counselor Rebecca Jim explains how she became an activist after seeing firsthand polluted water from Tar Creek harming her students. Activist Mitch Wax remembered fear driving him to organize with the Newton Creek Alliance after he had a pollution associated heart-attack at 39. These carefully pieced together interviews tell a dramatic and emotional story of how two communities became toxic.

Nirenberg’s knack for storytelling shows when he vividly paints the picture of Tar Creek. The distinctive blood-red creek tells a story of how wealth and racism allowed hundred-year-old mines to poison a community. Earl Hatley, an environmental organizer and member of the Cherokee Nation details the violent process of relocation, land theft, and genocide of the Cherokee and Quapaw Nations, enabling extractive industries.

The mines in Picher provided 40% of all the lead used in WWI and WWII. Mining left deep caverns below the town, which filled with lead, arsenic, cadmium and zinc laced water. Mothers describe how mining companies left mountains of chat (mine waste with alarmingly high levels of heavy metals) their children would play in and sled down. It’s a cycle the US tends to repeat Earl Hatley says: “we find a resource, we mine it, integrate it into the population, and don’t worry about the consequences until later, when we say Oh my god, what have we done?”

Sledge Metal captures the history of Greenpoint, the oldest continuous industrial area in the US. If Tar Creek is the example of how disastrous a single environmental incident can be, the Greenpoint neighborhood is an example of multiple incidents layered on each other. Through interviews and research from historical archives, Nirenberg reveals that Greenpoint was once home to a kerosene refinery, the first modern oil refinery, sugar refineries, hide tanning plants, canneries, plastic factories, and copper plants. It was only because of local, women led activism (dubbed the “The Angry Moms”) that the site began to be remediated.

Unlike in Tar Creek, as cleanup efforts began in Greenpoint, gentrification quickly followed. As real-estate prices in neighboring Brooklyn and Manhattan increased in the 1980s, developers could barely wait to turn waterfront property into profits. Even into the early 2000s, when Greenpoint was rapidly gentrifying, the creeks bed and banks were black with the sheen and smell of petroleum, only disrupted by occasional floating tires, car frames, seats, and paper.

Tim Kent, environmental director of the Quapaw Tribe in OK, says there are three components to sites like these, “political, science, and policy.” He argues that “you have to have all three present” to truly understand and address the situation. Nirenberg lays out the complex, unjust relationships between activists, tribal nations, and state and federal authorities, revealing how politics, science, and policy interact to poison communities.

If you’re just interested in Nirenberg’s analysis of the two sites and his historical grounding, stick to the bolded sections at the beginning of each chapter. However, it is through the narratives Nirenberg weaves together that the book truly comes alive. We meet teachers, scientists, a Governor, a Congressman, Native American tribal members, historians, and high school and college students.

Nirenberg’s style was not intuitive at first, but becomes natural quickly, almost like reading a film script, watching the characters evolve and develop relationships. This style can also be jarring. One moment a mother describes her child’s lead poisoning, the next a mining company official downplays the dangers of lead, and denies widespread contamination.

This book is not an indictment of the clean-up efforts at these two sites. Rather, it highlights voices not usually heard; mothers, affected children, and tribal elders, thoughtfully bringing them together to tell the personal, lesser-known stories of these sites. Nirenberg concludes that industry is not to blame for the outcome at Tar Creek and Greenpoint because there was no way they could anticipate what would happen at these sites. This may seem inappropriate after the emotional explanations of the negligence and complete disregard of these communities. The stories of Tar Creek and Greenpoint make plain that injustice and power differences create these disasters and also continue to affect clean-up efforts decades later.

From my home in a small New Hampshire college town, it takes a shorter amount of time for me to walk into the woods than to my nearest Dunkin’ Donuts (approximately 3 minutes to the first and five to the second). This pairing exemplifies the commonly held perception of the New England landscape in a sentence: forests and Dunkin’. But it is the ever-present forests of this region I am much more preoccupied with. Being so close to the forest has always felt like a gift to me. I’ve spent countless hours wandering along the river trail, photographing the princess pines silhouetted against the snowy ground, cataloguing the tiny lichens populating the sides of birch trunks I used for a seat, and marking the progress of a beaver family bringing down a red maple so wide I can’t wrap my arms around. This forest is my home. I thought I knew it inside and out. But a new book, Forests Adrift: Currents Shaping the Future of  Northeastern Trees, opened my eyes to even greater complexities at work in these forests.

 

“I have not been able to entirely let go of the emotional tug of the primeval and have no intention of forsaking the appeal of wilderness, but I am no longer able to walk in any forest without recognizing that humans have shaped and will continue to shape what I see,” writes Dr. Charles Canham in his book Forests Adrift. This sentence may seem controversial at first. Even I, a born New Englander, had not realized the extent to which human activities have impacted the forests of the Northeast. Yet Canham does not view human activity as at odds with a vibrant forest ecosystem. Humans are simply another part of the story of forests. In Forests Adrift the author presents a stunningly concise yet detailed account of ecological research in northeastern forests, along with the pressures and challenges that shape their future.

This is not a memoir, like Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl, which pulls you into the mechanics of paleobiology only after hooking you on Jahren’s life. This personal history is likely what propelled Lab Girl to such mainstream appeal, landing it on numerous Best Books of the Year lists. In contrast, Canham offers only a few scattered anecdotes about growing up in New York and his long-term research site in the forests of Connecticut. It is clear he is an authority on the topic though. Dr. Charles Canham has been studying northeastern forests his entire adult life, the last 30 years of which was spent at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in New York’s Hudson River Valley. This background gives him plenty of personal material to draw on. Canham’s effortless weaving in of first person accounts and short anecdotes keeps the science engaging.

From invasive forests pests, to white-tailed deer, to air pollution, Forests Adrift surveys the various ecological and human factors influencing northeastern forests. There are some alarming examples, and Canham clearly illustrates the vastly different time scales that forests operate on. He describes how, in modeling a potential future where 95 percent of hemlocks die as a result of the hemlock woolly adelgid pest, “it can take a thousand years, that is, four to five generations, for hemlock to regain its former abundance.” Our actions today will shape the forests of the next millennia.

This book should be read not just as a deep dive into the future of New England forests but as an argument for greater engagement between scientists, policymakers, and citizens. In chapter 10, Canham praises the recent work of the Cary Institute’s Gary Lovett and his collaborators on invasive pests in northeastern forests. They developed the Tree-SMART Trade proposal, which advocates for specific policies and practices that could help slow the spread of invasive pests. Canham declares that such blurring of the lines between science and policy is necessary. Ecology, particularly with the impacts of climate change, cannot be done in a vacuum.  

It is in the opening paragraph of the last chapter in which I connect most strongly with Canham. “If I had to trace my preoccupation with forest dynamics back to a single event, it would be to a walk I took in the woods of the Hudson Highlands as a teenager…I noticed that one of the trees was growing out of the old stone foundation of a long-gone farmhouse. What I had naively assumed to be the tranquility of an ancient forest hid a deep, complex history,” he recounts. Most readers have no interest in turning a walk in the woods into a career in forest ecology, but the simpler meaning—of finding greater complexity and depth in things we may have taken for granted as a child— is a universal experience.  

Although I have no such singular moment of clarity that determined my interest in forest ecology, Canham’s recollection resonated with me. There were countless family hikes through the forests of New England when we happened upon crumbling stone walls, or sometimes the faint parallel divots in the forest floor delineating an old logging road. Those moments are surprisingly magical, as though you’ve stumbled upon some secret history. 

One of Canham’s most striking revelations is how the historical context of the forests is essential to understanding their future. This may seem obvious, but science is often obsessed with novelty, the next discovery or the latest findings. Forests Adrift begins with an accounting of the recent past, the 400 years since European settlement that saw the clearing of nearly 85 percent of New England forests. It continues to the geologic past, 10,000 years ago and earlier when considerable movements of different plant species can be unearthed from pollen records in sediment cores taken from the bottom of lakes. Canham’s measured tracing of how the past has shaped northeastern forests helps to ground his explanations of current research. 

Forests Adrift is decidedly a book about how complex trees are, yet it is surprisingly readable and incredibly informative. There are moments when Canham gets quite excited about the particular topic he is describing. In Chapter 2 for instance, he uses a detailed overview of ecosystem modeling to explain the importance of creating more links between modeling and field research in forest ecology. But the tone remains informative without slipping into condescension. 

Forests Adrift ends with more uncertainty than when it started. But this may be Canham’s point. We must learn to live with uncertainty. Northeastern forests are changing, but what their future is—that’s not so easily predictable. Canham declares, “But the fact remains that there is enormous uncertainty when it comes to the future of our forests as well as very real limits on our ability to forecast change more than a few decades into the future.” Despite this clear-eyed description of the limitations of science, Canham is remarkably hopeful. It is precisely his ability to make science accessible that makes Forests Adrift such a uniquely compelling account of an ecosystem. Science does not have all the answers, but that does not mean we should stop asking questions.

A view of the cover, Source: HarperCollins Publishers

I was not expecting to find the beautifully descriptive landscape that I stumbled upon in Water Lands: A vision for the world’s wetlands and their people. Published in February 2020, authors Fred Pearce and Jane Madgwick give readers in quarantine exactly what many are looking for: an escape. 

While we are stuck at home, Water Lands takes readers to wetlands around the world with Pearce and Madgwick as their guides. Often, I felt as if I was a travel companion, accompanying them through the pages, from destination to remote destination. But despite the appealing descriptions of travel, this is not a travel guide. Rather it is an exploration of the dangers of environmental degradation and the hope people supply in the face of it. 

The book is divided into sections based on various categories of wetlands, each dotted with beautiful photographs. Salient case studies illustrate the intensity of worldwide wetland destruction as well as the optimism that can be found in saving them. Like a stained-glass window, each segment depicts a complete story within its small, colored pane. But when viewed together, a more striking image emerges.  

Remarkably, the authors inspire themes of hope and revitalization in the face of environmental carnage. They make a strong case for turning to indigenous leaders for guidance on how to restore their native wetlands, stating that “the stories told here are just as much about wetlanders as wetlands.” 

One of my favorite chapters tells the story of the Ruoergai Plateau in China. The harsh frozen climate of the plateau melts briefly into a marshy grassland in the summers, feeding the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. The plateau is made up of thick layers of peat, or partially decayed vegetation that efficiently store carbon from the atmosphere. Inhabited for 5000 years, humanity has only been able to survive on the plateau through yak farming. But as demand for yak products grew, the thick peat of the wetland was dried out, creating more space for the yaks. This led to overgrazing and a host of other ecological destruction. In short, the decision to drain the peat-land generated more problems than it solved, a theme that runs through many of the case studies. 

A view across the Ruoergai Plateau, Source: china.org 

The story of the Ruoergai Plateau is particularly interesting because it’s a story of hope. Through careful re-wetting processes, led by the native inhabitants of the plateau, sections of the wetland have been restored and native wildlife has begun to return. The wetland will never fully recover to its original undisturbed state. But this case study shows that historical harms can be reversed, creating fusions of human usage and ecological success in the world’s wetlands. 

These themes of recovery can be found in many chapters, including those set in the Moscow Peat-lands, and Java, Indonesia. But even outside these chapters, most stories contain both wins and losses, with endings still unknown. 

That being said, Pearce and Madgwick do not mince their words. They directly address the dangers of wetland degradation. One jaw dropping statistic stated that permafrost peatlands alone store double the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. These sorts of statistics, common throughout the book, illuminate how important it is to protect wetlands in order to keep stored carbon in the ground. Each page outlines another high-stakes battle for the life of an ecosystem – including its human inhabitants. 

In a chapter entitled “East African Lakes Drained for Valentine Rose,” the authors tell the story of the Rift Valley in Ethiopia. Here Dutch mega-farming operations have drained Lake Ziway to water millions of roses which will be sold across Europe. This story shows how the desertification of wetlands imperil local communities who have depended on wetland waters for generations. Forced to confront their potential complicity, readers might wonder if they have ever purchased roses from companies like this one. 

Despite the lyrical storytelling style and stunning photographs, there are moments where the book seems like a Wetlands International advertisement. Jane Madgwick is the CEO of conservation NGO Wetlands International. I would have appreciated more background on the mission and work of the organization. Instead, the book prompted me to do some of my own research on the organization and its goals – which was perhaps the authors’ intention.

After closing the final chapter, the authors leave me with one last call to action: We have irreversibly harmed wetlands. While it is impossible to return these beautiful ecosystems to their former pristine condition, as we saw in the case of the Ruoergai Plateau, a new balance can be struck. Humanity must protect and revive what has been lost by conserving wetlands and the cultures that thrive around them. 

In the introduction to the book Pearce and Madgwick draw on the biblical origins of life. “The Bible says that God created the world by dividing the land from the water. If so, He forgot about wetlands.” With this quote they remind us from the very beginning that there is no divine intervention to save the water lands. It is up to us.

In the fight to solve the climate crisis, much has been said about the need to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. In her 2014 book, aptly titled The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet, Kristin Ohlson argues that we should be placing just as much emphasis, if not more, on equipping the Earth’s soil to sequester carbon. This spiritual prequel to the 2020 Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground offers a multitude of perspectives on soil’s potential for carbon sequestration, albeit without the celebrity endorsements found in the documentary. Ultimately, The Soil Will Save Us is a thorough, if not particularly technical, guide to the ideas of soil carbon sequestration and conservation.

Carbon sequestration sounds like the name of a villain from Captain Planet, but actually refers to one of the more promising ways to slow our changing climate. Where limiting fossil fuel use reduces the amount of greenhouse gases spewing into the atmosphere, carbon sequestration takes the carbon already in the atmosphere and stores it on the Earth’s surface. Engineers are developing carbon-sequestering technology, but currently the most effective carbon sinks aren’t manmade. Oceans and forests can store huge amounts of carbon. Ohlson’s book makes clear to readers that soils are another key carbon sink, currently storing about 80% of all of the carbon in land-based ecosystems. If we can maximize its storage ability, she argues, the soil could save us from ourselves.

While the idea of soil as a carbon sink may not be new to those plugged into climate change discourse, The Soil Will Save Us presents this nature-based-solution for a decidedly non-scientific audience. This is not to say that the book is overly simplistic. Best exemplified in her likening the plant-mycorrhizae relationship to a pizza delivery business, Ohlson takes great care to explain every technical idea that she presents. Part of this ability may stem from empathy—Ohlson is not a scientist herself, but rather a prolific journalist whose work has focused on the natural world in recent years.

Ohlson’s perspective outside academic climate science sets The Soil Will Save Us apart from other literature about soil carbon sequestration. While the book contains interviews with notable soil scientists, Ohlson doesn’t limit the book to only their perspective. Most interviews in the book are with farmers and land managers instead. Soil as a carbon sink is discussed at length, but equal weight is given to the economic benefits of soil conservation practices. Innumerable farmers interviewed throughout The Soil Will Save Us recount the same story—they were skeptical of soil conservation practices until they saw how it improved their crop yields and durability. For them, soil’s ability to store carbon was nothing more than “icing on the cake.”

The inclusion of these viewpoints turns The Soil Will Save Us into a broader examination of the mainstream environmentalist movement. Though Ohlson makes it clear early on that she is a firm believer in human-caused climate change, not all the farmers and land managers profiled are as convinced. Even Australian soil conservation expert Bob Wilson admits in his interview “I believe the climate is changing…but I don’t believe that human activity has caused this.” He and other land managers featured are in the soil conservation business for the short-term economic benefits, not the existential fight against our changing climate. Implicitly throughout the book, Ohlson asks us—do beliefs and intentions matter if actions are a net positive?

Ohlson’s position outside of the sometimes-insular scientific community also allows her to critique even systems as rudimentary as the scientific method. In one notable conversation with land manager Allan Savory, Ohlson does not shy away from pointing out how Savory’s holistic land management methods are not reproducible, as the scientific method demands, because they are intrinsically contextual to the land’s specific circumstances.

Agricultural research funding is also not spared from Ohlson’s critique. She calls out the fact that many agricultural programs at US colleges are funded by commercial agriculture giants. One memorable quote from Ohio State Professor emeritus David Zartman makes the consequences of this evident: “the money dictates the direction of the research,” he asserts “not the other way around.” Through this interview Ohlson makes the argument that this research funding from agricultural companies explains carbon sequestration hasn’t taken off in the United States like it has elsewhere.

The book’s title isn’t hyperbole—throughout the text the point is made time and time again that if we take the soil seriously, it really could help save us from the climate crisis. Sometimes however, this point is made a bit too emphatically; a conversation with molecular biologist David C. Johnson implies at the end of the book that we should focus all of our energy on soil carbon sequestration in lieu of limiting fossil fuel emissions because “we’re not going to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions anytime soon.” This idea is so outside of the scientific consensus about how we should address climate change, which stresses the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions above all else. Although Ohlson acknowledges this dimension of Johnson’s assertions, their inclusion in the book’s final pages is baffling.

Despite some diversions, The Soil Will Save Us leaves readers with a clear moral. Soil is a powerful, complex system, and we must start treating it as such if we want to get out of the hole that we’ve dug ourselves.

“He just moved about on the river, solitary, aimless.” This is João Guimarães Rosa, narrating the fictional short story of a father who embarks on a journey along a nameless river, never setting “foot on earth or grass, on isle or mainland shore.” He floats between the river’s banks: in the nebulous space called the third bank—where time stands still, where the past and present merge. Author Chris Arnold of The Third Bank of the River titled his book after Rosa’s acclaimed short story. Arnold was drawn to the “timelessness” of the third bank. It captures his own meandering voyages down the Amazon River, and the Amazon itself, a region shaped by dreams of development but crippled by the legacies of colonization. From thriving drug cartels in the city of Manaus to fast disappearing Indigenous communities in the Amazonian interior, no place in the world contains so many “eras of the human experience existing at the same time.”

Arnold deftly weaves these stories into a sprawling panorama of the Amazon. His writing is suffused with an intimacy that comes from someone deeply tied to the region. This connection, as it turns out, runs blood deep. Arnold was born in the city of Belo Horizonte but was adopted by an American family and later raised in Oregon. His childhood and teenage years were marked by an abiding longing for Brazil, yet it was a country he knew only in fragments: a Brazilian flag hoisted on top of his nightstand; a Latin History class; Portuguese language learning CDs. In his 20s, Arnold finally returned to Brazil to meet his birth family. The journey was a discovery of both personal roots and a nation’s history. For Arnold, the search for the Amazon is a search for identity.

Through interweaving the personal and political, Arnold expands public imagination of the Amazon beyond childhood movies of the “booby-trapped temple, Indiana-Jones” kind or well-intentioned but reductionist narratives asserting that saving the rainforest means protecting trees. Surprisingly, the actual jungle finds little mention in Arnold’s chronicles. You get glimpses of it—the river “banks lined with factories” and the “the cooler, faster Solimões and the warmer, slower Negro…light and shadow, murky sediment and decayed leaves—” but it almost always serves as the backdrop to the book’s main animating force: the people of the Amazonas, and the power relations they are entrenched in.

The Amazon is steeped in violence. It lurks everywhere. In the dense foliage that camouflage illegal loggers. Between privately funded prison walls. In the industrial waste that seeps into the Xingu river. Arnold does not paper over the carnage. Oscillating between dispassionate accounts (“12:12am. Harlem Duque Protazio…two men, one motorcycle, seven fatal shots”) and grim, gritty details (“Wives were raped in front of their husbands, six-year-olds beheaded in front of their mothers”), he illuminates the underbelly of the romanticized tropical rainforest.

More often than not, Arnold blames the “white man” for such atrocities. The white man comes in many guises: early European invader, public-private energy consortium, and wealthy cattle rancher. First came the Portuguese colonists. They took over the city of Belém, located at the mouth of the Amazon River, in the early 17^th century, and then the entire Amazon Basin. Spain, France, Holland, and Ireland soon followed. Drunk on power and fantasies of diamond, gold, and rubber, the colonists enslaved Brazilian Indians, the only people familiar with the forest’s treacherous landscapes. Indian laborers were forced to work their fingers to the bone. If quotas were not reached, settlers meted out brutal punishments. Those that did not collapse from exhaustion or torture died from “white man” diseases.

Tribes fought back of course; acts of resistance abound in Arnold’s book. He tells the story of Chief Ajuricaba: In 1728, in a bloody conflict between the Dutch and Ajuricaba, the Dutch captured and chained the chief and his allies. Using the same metal shackles that restrained them, the prisoners strangled their captors. The Dutch inevitably overpowered Ajuricaba’s tribe. Choosing death over slavery, Ajuricaba “leapt into the river…and never reappeared dead or alive.”

In the end, we are reminded again of Rosa’s third bank—the river that perpetually renews itself. Arnold’s travels through the Amazon unearth a history of creation and destruction. Here is a region that has risen out of its tragic past. Today, the Amazon boasts the second largest hydroelectric dam in the world and the fourth longest highway in Brazil. And in 2014 and 2016, Manaus hosted games for the World Cup and the summer Olympics respectively. The pomp and circumstance of these events sent a clear message to the world: “Brazil is the country of the future.” And yet history repeats, often in painful, cruel ways. Arnold painstakingly details the inequality, violence, Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and environmental degradation that continue to plague the region. We come away feeling like the Amazon and perhaps all places exist in the timeless third bank, where we experience “cycles of horror and hope as ceaseless as the Amazon clock.”

Book Review: Sowing the Seeds of Peace for Food Security: Disentangling the nexus between conflict, food security and peace by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The loss of land, crops, and livestock is becoming a new reality for many farmers and pastoralists in Kenya. Longer dry seasons and uncertain rains have put pressure on pastoralists to move their herds to nature reserves and farmlands in search of pasture and water. This is highly unusual for a country where, historically, farmers have lived in higher altitudes and pastoralists in lower areas, but water shortages are forcing herders to move higher, leading to violent clashes between the two groups. The arising violence has shaken the food systems and livelihoods of these communities. 

In a recent report, Sowing the Seeds of Peace for Food Security: Disentangling the nexus between conflict, food security and peace, researchers at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations revealed the devastating effects of armed conflicts on food security. Not just in Kenya, but all around the world. 

The researchers successfully weave in literature, cross-country comparisons, country case studies, and original narratives to highlight how violence undermines the ability for communities to access food, disproportionately affecting women and children. The study is aimed at policy makers, academics, students, and for all who are interested in food security and peace in violence-afflicted countries. 

In less than 90 pages, the study uses statistics and case studies to paint a haunting and revealing image of the damage violence creates that forces people to go hungry. One story they tell is of conflict in South Sudan. Four decades of constant fighting between two ethnic groups over natural resources and a famine that hit in 2017 has led to high levels of malnutrition. 

Inadequate relief support from the Sudanese government to mitigate violent conflict has led to a staggering decrease in food availability. Especially troubling is that one in three children experience malnourishment. Infrastructure, irrigation systems, and roads used for trade all get damaged as militants destroy areas to gain control over territories. This forces family members to reduce meals, sell their livestock, migrate to less affected areas, and take their children out of school. Increased droughts have also deepened the confrontations between groups, leaving more people with less food and worsening the fight for resources. The government’s inability to provide security to communities has left the most innocent citizens without proper access to food or an opportunity to study. 

This is even more concerning for parents, who, for many, providing for their children is their main concern. Wouldn’t that be yours? Well, the study found that mothers will put themselves in dangerous situations to provide for their children. 

Returning to Kenya, rural women have found themselves risking their lives to feed their children. There, the social norm is for women to cook and gather all the materials needed to cook, even the fuelwood to produce charcoal. Refugees in Kakuma, Kenya, are forced to exit the refugee camp to look for wood. Women will walk long distances to access wood, where they risk being attacked by Kakuma locals, who claim that refugees are making their own food insecurity worse, and wild animals. Rural women shouldn’t find themselves pressured to risk their lives to help their household stay afloat, yet they often are. 

The FAO has created a sustainable program to solve this problem and alleviate food insecurity.  Rather than using wood for the production of charcoal, the FAO promotes women to use invasive shrubs. It’s a sustainable win-win situation that allows women to save time and engage in income-generating activities, while also preventing deforestation. The program is not only good for women in Kenya, but also for the planet. 

To create more positive programs like this one, governments must be able to provide basic services. Unfortunately, many countries affected by conflict do not have the financial resources to provide basic services that could alleviate violence and food insecurity. The study lacks a plausible solution for governments to implement a policy that takes into account a country’s financial resources. By not expanding sufficiently on a country’s economic possibilities to invest in food security programs, the researchers leave the reader hungry for more. A greater focus on how the international community could play a larger role in helping developing countries would have solidified the researchers’ recommendations. 

Even though the study lacks this, the study does an incredible job at bringing to light the hardships that women and children face in their inability to access food in conflict zones. It’s a must read for politicians seeking to improve the livelihoods of their people, as it provides recommendations for sustaining peace, conflict sensitivity, and on how to conduct research and analysis to inform the design and implementation of food security interventions. In addition, it’s accessible enough for anyone to learn about this subject.

Sowing the Seeds of Peace for Food Security does a remarkable job at analyzing various case studies to enhance the reader’s understanding of how conflict impacts food insecurity and the need to reduce violence to sustain peace. While reading the case studies, the researchers remind us that to plant the first seed of peace for food security, governments need to create policies that protect women and children from violence.

In April 2019, The Intercept released a seven-minute video titled titled A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Aptly named, the video, written by Naomi Klein, narrated by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and animated by Molly Crabapple, portrays a future with the Green New Deal and a society that is “dignified and humane.” When I first saw it, I cried. It is a beautiful imagining of the United States where we collectively address climate change and lift each other up in the process.

This video and the creative process are both addressed in Naomi Klein’s new book On Fire: The (Burning) Case for the Green New Deal. As the title suggests, Klein is advocating for the Green New Deal (GND), an ambitious and far-reaching climate action plan introduced by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey. This book is more than just an argument for the proposed policy, though. It is an entire journey of Klein’s evolving thoughts on climate politics. 

On Fire captures Klein’s coverage of the developing climate crisis through a collection of essays, speeches, and articles she’s written since 2010. A prolific author and activist, Klein has made a name for herself over the past two decades critiquing capitalism and globalization. In her latest work, On Fire, she showcases her ‘greatest hits.’

If you just want to read Klein’s argument for the GND, stick to the Introduction and Epilogue. That’s hardly the point, though. Klein’s book puts current events from the last decade into the context of climate change. The BP oil spill, Pope Francis, the 2016 U.S. election, and Hurricane Harvey all make appearances. Her compelling narrative path makes a case for a comprehensive climate policy like the Green New Deal before the GND itself ever existed. In “Capitalism vs the Climate (November 2011),” Klein’s ambitious imagining of a broad climate agenda, meant to “break every rule in the free market playbook,” closely mirrors the GND.

Klein’s case for the GND is multi-faceted, too. She not only writes on its necessity, but takes a thoughtful approach to answering who, what, and how. From the top, Klein makes sure to highlight the precedent for U.S. progressive social policy by looking back at the realities of the New Deal. Then she expands outwards. One essay addresses the importance of supporting artists during the implementation of the GND. Another posits the grassroots action necessary to take such expansive and radical climate action. Klein even spends a chapter mulling over the philosophical implications of geo-engineering in the context of seeing orca whales off the shore of British Columbia (a personal favorite).

Along with her broad-reaching subject matter, Klein delivers her arguments in a semi-informal, even witty, voice. This is no surprise, considering that some of the chapters are transcriptions of speeches and all are pieces of public writing. Unlike much writing about climate change, On Fire is accessible to the casual reader who doesn’t have a degree in Environmental Studies.

That does not make the content easy to swallow, however. As with most media about the climate crisis, I found myself cycling through anger, despondency, helplessness, and cautious hope. Klein herself expresses similar feelings and, as readers, we can track her growing sense of urgency throughout the book.

Is On Fire an in-depth analysis of the Green New Deal? No, but it’s not trying to be. Instead, this book captures an evolution of thought in reaction to the climate crisis movement. Klein breaks down the urgency of the matter and helps readers to connect the dots. By the end, I am left wanting more. Not more from the book, but rather more from our governments and more for the people and the planet. On Fire will light a spark in you, so be ready.