Outside/In Book Club

Past Reads

January 2022
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
by Elizabeth Rush

This is a book about climate change, yes, but it manages to straddle the line between bleak and beautiful, with humor and humanity. As author Elizabeth Rush told us, “It’s about rising sea levels, but it’s also about rising into awareness and into power.”

Her on-the-ground inquiry of the leading edge of sea level rise takes us to communities along the Gulf Coast, New York City, California’s Bay Area, and even a misty forest in Oregon’s Cascades. She explores what’s happening on American coastlines… and what that means for the people, and the species, on that leading edge of sea level rise.

Find a copy or listen to the episode here.

Fuzz_9781324001935(Revised) (2).jpg

November 2021
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

Trash-rummaging bears in Aspen? Drunk elephant attacks in India? Avian vandals at the Vatican? Mary Roach digs into the strange science, ethics, and consequences of human-wildlife conflict.

Find a copy or listen to the episode here.

four lost cities lilacs.JPG
trace book club.jpg

August 2021
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz chronicles the “rise and fall of four ancient cities” — Çatalhöyük, Angkor, Pompeii and Cahokia— and explores what these cities tell us about environmental change and civilization.

Find a copy or listen to the episode here.

May 2021
Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy

Geologist and writer Lauret Savoy searches for the unsaid in the American landscape and her own family history, using an approach that views fossil hunting and historical inquiry as versions of the same pursuit.

Find a copy or listen to the episode here.