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Every book here turns up somewhere on the blog, at the end of an essay or in one of the reading lists. They are sorted by the questions this blog keeps returning to: who owns genes and seeds, what new technologies do to the people who live with them, how food gets made, and what the climate fixes on offer can really deliver. The line under each title is ours.
How we chose: books that explain their subject clearly to a general reader, that between them cover more than one side of an argument, and that are widely read and reviewed. Book links go to Amazon.
Genes, cells and life AI, data and the machines Monopoly and corporate power Food and how it is made Seeds, soil and the garden Climate: the science, the fixes, the politics Nature writing Genes, cells and life How heredity works, how gene editing arrived, and the people whose cells and genomes made the science possible.
Genes, cells and life
The Gene: An Intimate History Siddhartha Mukherjee Mendel to CRISPR, told as history, science and family story at once. Amazon (book) The Code Breaker Walter Isaacson The race to turn CRISPR into a tool, told through Jennifer Doudna and her rivals. Amazon (book) A Crack in Creation Jennifer Doudna, Samuel Sternberg CRISPR explained by one of its inventors, including her own worries about where it leads. Amazon (book) The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins The gene-centred view of evolution that shaped a generation of biology readers. Amazon (book) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot The cells taken from one woman without consent, and the research empire they built. Amazon (book) The Song of the Cell Siddhartha Mukherjee Cell biology from the first microscopes to cell therapies, by the author of The Gene. Amazon (book) The Violinist's Thumb Sam Kean Strange, funny stories from the history of genetics and the DNA code. Amazon (book) The Mosquito Timothy C. Winegard History told through the insect, and the diseases it carries, that shaped wars and empires. Amazon (book) On the blog: Gene drives: the case for caution and the case for trying
AI, data and the machines How machine learning systems learn and fail, who owns the data they run on, and the long-range arguments about control.
AI, data and the machines
The Alignment Problem Brian Christian The clearest history of how machine-learning systems learn the wrong lesson, and what researchers do about it. Amazon (book) AI Snake Oil Arvind Narayanan, Sayash Kapoor Two Princeton computer scientists sort AI that works from AI that is sold on hope. Amazon (book) Co-Intelligence Ethan Mollick A practical, hands-on look at working alongside language models without handing them the wheel. Amazon (book) Weapons of Math Destruction Cathy O'Neil A mathematician on scoring systems that quietly decide credit, jobs and parole. Amazon (book) Unmasking AI Joy Buolamwini How a graduate student found facial-analysis systems failing darker faces, and what followed. Amazon (book) Atlas of AI Kate Crawford Follows AI back to the mines, warehouses and data sets it is built from. Amazon (book) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff The long, angry case that personal data became raw material for prediction markets. Amazon (book) Human Compatible Stuart Russell A leading AI researcher argues that machines should stay uncertain about what we want. Amazon (book) Life 3.0 Max Tegmark A physicist sketches the futures that general-purpose AI could open up, good and bad. Amazon (book) The Coming Wave Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar A founder of DeepMind on why AI and synthetic biology arrive together, and why containing them is so hard. Amazon (book) On the blog: The best books on AI: ten that explain the machines and who controls them · Farm data: who owns what your tractor knows? · Bring back technology assessment
Food and how it is made Where the industrial meal comes from, how processed food is engineered, and what cooking from a whole farm looks like.
Food and how it is made
The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan Four meals traced back to their farms, from industrial corn to a hunted wild pig. Amazon (book) Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser The reporting that put meatpacking, franchising and flavour labs in front of a wide audience. Amazon (book) Salt Sugar Fat Michael Moss How processed-food companies engineer cravings, from the inside of their labs and boardrooms. Amazon (book) In Defense of Food Michael Pollan Short and quotable: why nutrition science lost sight of food itself. Amazon (book) The Dorito Effect Mark Schatzker Why bland produce and flavour chemistry go together, and what that does to appetite. Amazon (book) The Third Plate Dan Barber A chef argues that good cooking has to start from what a whole farm system can grow. Amazon (book) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Barbara Kingsolver A year of eating what a family could grow or buy nearby, warts and all. Amazon (book) On the blog: Agroecology on the farm: what changes, season by season
Seeds, soil and the garden Practical books for saving seed, feeding soil life and growing food on a small plot, plus two on rebuilding farm soil.
Seeds, soil and the garden
Seed to Seed Suzanne Ashworth The standard home reference on saving seed, crop by crop, with isolation distances. Amazon (book) The Seed Garden Seed Savers Exchange (Micaela Colley, Jared Zystro) A detailed seed-saving manual from Seed Savers Exchange, with pollination and storage notes. Amazon (book) The Vegetable Gardener's Bible Edward C. Smith A thorough all-round vegetable book built on wide rows, deep soil and organic methods. Amazon (book) Teaming with Microbes Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis An approachable guide to the soil food web and gardening with it rather than against it. Amazon (book) The Market Gardener Jean-Martin Fortier How a small, intensively planted plot can make a living for a grower. Amazon (book) Dirt to Soil Gabe Brown A North Dakota farmer on rebuilding his soil with cover crops, grazing and no-till. Amazon (book) Growing a Revolution David R. Montgomery A geologist visits farms on several continents that rebuilt soil organic matter. Amazon (book) On the blog: Soil carbon: what the science can promise, and what it can't
Climate: the science, the fixes, the politics The stakes, the solutions people argue over, the politics behind them, and two novels that imagine what comes next.
Climate: the science, the fixes, the politics
The Uninhabitable Earth David Wallace-Wells A blunt tour of what warming at the upper end of the projections would mean. Amazon (book) Not the End of the World Hannah Ritchie A data scientist pushes back on doom with long-run trends on emissions, food and pollution. Amazon (book) How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Bill Gates An engineer-minded plan sorted by sector: electricity, making things, growing food, moving around. Amazon (book) Drawdown Paul Hawken (ed.) A ranked catalogue of climate solutions, many of them in farming and land use. Amazon (book) Regeneration Paul Hawken The Drawdown team returns with solutions framed around ecosystems and fairness. Amazon (book) This Changes Everything Naomi Klein The argument that the climate fight is really a fight about economic power. Amazon (book) Under a White Sky Elizabeth Kolbert Kolbert on people fixing nature with more technology, from carp barriers to solar geoengineering. Amazon (book) The Ministry for the Future Kim Stanley Robinson A novel that runs through carbon coins, geoengineering and climate diplomacy over decades. Amazon (book) Termination Shock Neal Stephenson A thriller about a billionaire who starts geoengineering on his own. Amazon (book) On the blog: Solar geoengineering without the hype: questions and answers
Nature writing Classics of the environmental movement and newer books on forests, fungi, animal senses and extinction.
Nature writing
Silent Spring Rachel Carson The 1962 book on pesticides that started modern environmental politics. Amazon (book) A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold Leopold on the land ethic: short, seasonal essays that still frame conservation debates. Amazon (book) Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer A botanist and member of the Potawatomi Nation on plants, reciprocity and science. Amazon (book) The Sixth Extinction Elizabeth Kolbert Species loss in the age of humans, told through field trips to labs and reefs. Amazon (book) The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben A forester on how trees share resources and signals, written for a general reader. Amazon (book) Entangled Life Merlin Sheldrake Fungi as networks, partners and decomposers, and why soils depend on them. Amazon (book) An Immense World Ed Yong How other animals sense the world, and how little of it we perceive. Amazon (book) The Overstory Richard Powers A prize-winning novel built around trees and the people who try to save them. Amazon (book) 