Recommended Reading
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I only recommend books that I have read and think are important additions to my own Hopeful Action library.
Commanding Hope by Thomas Homer-Dixon
In Commanding Hope, Homer-Dixon shows why and how we got here; and most importantly, the powers we possess to renew our imperiled world. This is a hopeful book.
Climate - A New Story by Charles Eisenstein
Flipping the script on climate change, Eisenstein makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction.
Hope Matters by Elin Kelsey
Timely, evidence-based, and persuasive, Hope Matters is an argument for the place of hope in our lives and a celebration of the turn toward solutions in the face of the environmental crisis.
Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe
In Saving Us, Hayhoe argues that when it comes to changing hearts and minds, facts are only one part of the equation. We need to find shared values in order to connect our unique identities to collective action. This is not another doomsday narrative about a planet on fire. It is a multilayered look at science, faith, and human psychology
Active Hope by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone
Active Hope is about finding, and offering, our best response when facing concerns about our world situation. It offers tools that help us face the mess we're in, as well as find and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, towards a society and way of being that support the flourishing of life.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
All the Feeling Under the Sun by Leslie Davenport
A timely, thoughtful book that will help kids work through their feelings of anxiety and stress relating to climate change.
How to be a Climate Optimist by Chris Turner
This is a book that moves past the despair and futile anger over ecological collapse and harnesses that passion toward the project of building a twenty-first century quality of life that surpasses the twentieth-century version in every way.
How to Change Everything by Naomi Klein
How to Change Everything will provide readers with clear information about how our planet is changing, but also, more importantly, with inspiration, ideas, and tools for action. Because young people can help build a better future. Young people can help decide what happens next. Young people can help change everything.
From What is to What If by Rob Hopkins
From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.
The Climate Optimist Handbook by Anne Therese Gennari
The Climate Change Optimist Handbook will guide you through that shift to become your own source of optimism. You will learn the psychological reasons we aren’t acting more on climate change and gain tools and mindset tips to model positive change in your community and home. A grounded and resilient leader is waiting to be born inside you—one who doesn’t just believe a better world is possible, but who is eager and excited to do everything possible to make that world a reality.
This is an adaptation of Braiding Sweetgrass for young adults, which reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.