Recommended Reading

Over the sixty years since it was first published, Silent Spring has become so much more than a book—mere mention of the title signals an ethos, a belief in a better world and our personal agency to keep it heading in that direction. Rachel Carson’s landmark exposé argued for pesticide regulation, especially of malaria-fighting DDT, which when developed was lauded as a modern marvel worthy of the Nobel Prize. Carson, an award-winning nature writer and former marine biologist, combined her poetic voice with rigorous scientific investigative journalism to show the true cost of spreading poisons over America’s fields and coastlines. Silent Spring is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and it led to the U.S. ban of DDT in 1972. Yet, have you ever actually read it? If, like me, you are guilty of knowing this classic only through cultural references and sound bites, you owe it to yourself to savor it, page by page, bird by bird…

From observing suburban wildlife to climate anxiety to being bullied, teenager Dara McAnulty captures his daily life in Northern Ireland in this yearlong chronicle. Acclaimed for its contagious authenticity, Diary of a Young Naturalist earned a Wainwright Prize, the United Kingdom’s top award for nature writing, but has also garnered fans around the world. In his short but vivid everyday scenes, McAnulty wants “to find the beauty in everything.” He describes how local trees shift from season to season, the turmoil of starting at a new school, and his anger over climate change inaction, all told through an intimate lens of autism, a trait he shares with most of his close-knit family. For him, the natural world “all make[s] sense to me, people just don’t.” Equal parts memoir and manifesto, Diary is joyfully urgent, a rallying cry for biodiversity and nonconformity. McAnulty writes, and Rachel Carson would have agreed, “It’s the small pockets of wild resistance that can help.”

Majka Burhardt is a professional mountain athlete, Patagonia ambassador, American Mountain Guides Association climbing guide, and global conservationist. When she and her husband, also a professional climbing guide, try to start a family, Burhardt is anxious about how they’ll balance it all—and that’s before they discover she’s having twins. More is a no-bullshit memoir of her motherhood journey’s highs and lows, told through a series of letters and journals created during Burhardt’s pregnancy and the first five years of her children’s lives. She candidly details the resentment, anger, and fear that too few moms talk about. Yet as she struggles, she sees in her children hope—hope “that we will explore the world together powered by our feet and arms and lungs. That one day you will both nap at the same time. That you will forgive me for the mistakes I will surely make. That I will forgive myself.” For any outdoor lover juggling the unspoken challenges of parenting, More offers powerful perspective.

Explore the Pamir Highway, one of the world’s highest roads, as it climbs and winds through Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Join a pack of fellow adventurers for the storied Iditarod Trail, a thousand rugged miles across the snow and winds of interior Alaska. Or fully challenge your lungs and legs on the remote, mountainous dirt roads of the Peru Great Divide. Grand Bikepacking Journeys is the definitive guide to the world’s most alluring long-distance bike routes, from South Africa to Nepal to Spain and beyond. Gathered by British adventure cyclist Stefan Amato, each route description includes plenty of practical information on gear, travel logistics, and planning to help you turn trip dreams into reality. A hefty 9 x 11.5 inches in size, it’s crammed with travel stories and gorgeous images that will send you rummaging to find your passport. From point A to point B and everywhere in between, it’s a wanderlust-inducing feast of a book.