Summer Reading: Michael Mann

Internationally recognized scientist and advocate Michael E. Mann is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media. His research focuses on climate science and climate change. He has received many honors and awards and is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and five books, including The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars and The New Climate War. Here, he suggests five books for your summer reading.

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The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

by Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway

The authors of the climate change denial exposé Merchants of Doubt now take on the dogma of free market ideology. I highly recommend this book because only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.

 

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth

This account of the cyber arms trade edged out my own book (The New Climate War) to win the Financial Times’ 2021 book of the year. I recommend it because we cannot make progress on any of the great challenges we face—including the climate crisis—in a political economy of rampant disinformation.

 

Life: A Journey through Science and Politics

by Paul R. Ehrlich

I recommend the book not only because Ehrlich is a good friend, but because his decades-old warnings about environmental threats—including the climate crisis—have proved so salient and prescient.

Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler

My wife and daughter recommend Butler’s book about a minister’s daughter who loses her family and home and ventures out into the unprotected American landscape.

The Climate Book

by Greta Thunberg

Thunberg’s “essential handbook for changing the world” presents diverse insights from so many leading thinkers (and even yours truly).