‘An essential voice’ HELEN MACDONALD

Urgent and inspiring lessons from the frontlines of the climate catastrophe – by one of our most important and influential environmental writers.

From Greenland’s melting ice sheets to New Zealand’s protected mountaintops, we join Kolbert on the road as she travels to the places most dramatically affected by climate change – revealing a world which is both dangerously fragile and remarkably resilient.

We encounter newly discovered species and meet the last surviving members of others, witness the power of rewilding up close and are reminded of the abounding wonders of our natural world. Along the way we also meet countless brilliant individuals who are steering us towards a better future: scientists harnessing AI to commune with whales; activists successfully lobbying for the rights of nature; and ordinary people making extraordinary moves, such as the Samsø islanders leading completely carbon-neutral lives.

The natural world is changing profoundly, and the threats to our planet are only growing more serious. Now is the time to deepen our understanding of this incredible world we are in danger of losing – and to act, while we still can.

‘No one rivals Kolbert’s ability to write deeply, empathetically and engagingly about mankind’s relationship with the physical world’ CHRIS GOODALL

‘Illuminates the world’s complexities in vivid colour: no one contextualises the natural world better than Kolbert does’ HARRIET RIX

‘There is no better way to understand our changing world than through Elizabeth Kolbert’ CHRIS FITCH

‘To be a well-informed citizen of Planet Earth, you need to read Elizabeth Kolbert.’  ROLLING STONE

In H is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the history, and future, of climate change – from A, for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world’s first climate model in 1894, to Z, for Net Zero. Along the way she looks at Greta Thunberg’s ‘blah blah blah’ speech, flies an all-electric plane, experiments with the effects of extreme temperatures on the human body, and struggles with the deep uncertainty of the future.

Complemented by Wesley Allsbrook’s gorgeous, colour illustrations, H is for Hope offers an inspiring, worrying and, above all, hopeful vision for how we can still save our planet.

Elizabeth Kolbert has become one of the most important writers on the environment. Now she investigates the immense challenges humanity faces as we scramble to reverse, in a matter of decades, the effects we’ve had on the atmosphere, the oceans, the world’s forests and rivers – on the very topography of the globe.

In Under a White Sky, she takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a ‘super coral’ that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth, changing the sky from blue to white.

One way to look at human civilisation, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. By turns inspiring, terrifying and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

**CHOSEN BY BILL GATES AND BARACK OBAMA AS A SUMMER 2021 READ**