Academic Book Week (#AcademicBookWeek) has today unveiled its essential list of academic books on the environment, ahead of its week-long celebration of academic books from 9-13 March 2020.

Curated by academic booksellers, the reading list spans climate change, geography, demography, biology, politics and beyond. From Silent Spring, which documented the environmental problems caused by pesticides over 50 years ago, to The Future We Choose, a guide on how to survive the climate crisis due to be published in February 2020, the list demonstrates how academic books can spark and influence the debate on the most topical issues of our time.

The Academic Book Week 2020 Recommended Reads are:

- The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells (2019) Penguin Books
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962) Penguin Modern Classics
- There Is No Planet B by Mike Berners-Lee (2019) Cambridge University Press
- Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker; John Ibbitson (2019) Robinson (Little, Brown) 
- ORIGINS How the Earth Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell (2019) Vintage 
- The Future We Choose by Christiana Figueres; Tom Rivett-Carnac (February 2020) Manilla Press (Bonnier Books UK)
- Field Notes From A Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert (2006) Bloomsbury
- Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock (1979) Oxford University Press
- The Psychology Of Climate Change by Geoffrey Beattie; Laura Mcguire (2018) Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
- The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh (2016) The University of Chicago Press

Organised by the Booksellers Association in association with University College London, Academic Book Week returns with a series of events, panel discussions and initiatives.

Academic Book Week aims to open up a dialogue between the makers, providers and readers of academic books, and increase awareness of the academic book as a vehicle for ground-breaking ideas, as well as alerting policy-makers to its importance as part of the intellectual ecosystem of the UK.
 
Will Williams, Head of Academic Sales, Blackwell’s Bookshops, said: “Our theme of ‘Academic Books and The Environment’ encourages campus booksellers to engage with academics and students in a subject area that, many would say, is the most urgent of our lifetimes. Our starting list of ten titles emphasises the range of publishing booksellers can link into this theme. From classic ecological texts to leading edge studies of the latest science, we provide a taster for the incredible depth of publishing shops can feature.”

To join the conversation and share the books that would be on your essential academic reading list about the environment, please use the hashtag #AcademicBookWeek. 

Follow the latest developments via Twitter: @AcBookWeek and https://academicbookweek.com/