July 2021 Creation Corner Column: Summer readings on Eco-theology, Climate, Environment, the Pandemic, and Children's books
EcoTheology titles
The Cosmic Spirit: Awakenings at the Heart of All Religions, the Earth, and the Multiverse. Roland Faber.
The Earth Cries Out: How Faith Communities Meet the Challenges of Sustainability. Gary Gardner.
Ecotheology: A Christian Conversation. Kiara Jorgenson and Alan Padgett.
The Green Good News: Christ's Path to Sustainable and Joyful Life. T. Wilson Dickinson.
Hope in Disarray: Piecing Our Lives Together in Faith. Grace Ji-Sun Kim.
Jesus for Farmers and Fishers: Justice for All Those Marginalized by Our Food System. Gary Paul Nabhan.
Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision. Randy Woodley.
Theologies of Land: Contested Land, Spatial Justice, and Identity. K.K. Yeo and Gene L. Green, eds.
Climate Crisis and Environment Book Titles (A-to-H; balance I-to-Z next month)
The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization. Roland Ennos.
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another. Ainissa Ramirez.
An Atman Visits Planet Earth: 250 Million Years of Evolution. Robert H. Brown. Sci-Fi novel
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal. Mark Bittman.
Animal Welfare in China: Culture, Politics and Crisis. Peter J. Li.
Animals' Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild. Barbara J. King..
Another End of the World is Possible: Living the Collapse (and not merely surviving it). Pablo Servigne, Raphael Stevens, & Gautheir Chapelle.
Antarctica: The Sleeping Giant. Sebastian Copeland.
The Arctic: What Everyone Needs to Know. Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall.
Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac. Jeremy Hance.
Bay Lexicon. Jane Wolff.
Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. Michelle Nijhuis.
Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea. Edith Widder.
Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking. Duncan Minshull, editor.
The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think. Jennifer Ackerman.
Breaking Through: Understanding Sovereignty and Security in the Circumpolar Arctic. Edited by Wilfrid Greaves and P. Whitney Lackenbauer.
The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It. Helen Scales.
Cataclysms: An Environmental History of Humanity. Laurent Testot.
Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene. David Sepkosi.
The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth. Frank A. von Hippel.
A Children's Bible. Lydia Millet. A Climate Fiction Novel.
Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays. Paul Kingsworth.
The Conscious Closet: The Revolutionary Guide to Looking Good While Doing Good. Elizabeth L. Cline.
Conservation Science and Advocacy for a Planet in Peril: Speaking Truth to Power. Dominick A. DellaSala.
The Contamination of the Earth: A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age. Francois Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux, translated from the French by Janice Egan and Michael Egan.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Michael Braungart and William McDonough (re: circular economy).
The Culture of Feedback: Ecological Thinking in Seventies America. Daniel Belgrad.
The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves. JB MacKinnon.
Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos. Edited by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read.
Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology. Chris Otter.
Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West. Heather Hansman.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Paul Hawken, editor.
Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Catastrophes. Chris Funk.
Earth Detox: How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet. Julian Cribb.
Earth Spirit Dreaming: Shamanic Ecotherapy Practices. Elizabeth E. Meachem.
Eat Your Front Garden: The Invisible Allotment. Mat Coward.
Elsewhere: A Journey into Our Age of Islands. Alastair Bonnett.
Encounters With the Archdruid: Narratives With A Conservationist and Three of His Natural Enemies. John McPhee.
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures. Merlin Sheldrake.
The Epilogues: Afterwords on the Planet. Barbara Hurd.
Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. Leah Penniman.
A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. Sarah Jaquette Ray. (advertised as "Gen Z's first 'existential toolkit' for combatting eco-guilt and burnout while advocating for climate justice.") Google the title for similar books.
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Suzanne Simard.
Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet. Sandra Goldmark.
Flights of Passage: An Illustrated Natural History of Bird Migration. Mike Unwin and David Tipling.
A Friend of the Earth. T.C. Boyle. (Novel).
From Here to There: The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way. Michael Bond.
Hatched: Dispatches from the Backyard Chicken Movement. Gina G. Warren.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Bill Gates.
How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Candis Callison.
How to Love Animals: In a Human-Shaped World. Henry Mance.
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Special Periodical Issue
The American Scholar (published by Phi Beta Kappa),for Summer 2012 features "Turning to Nature: How it consoled us, how it can heal us, and how we could show our gratitude", by Lucy Jones, as its cover story. Her article, "Rewilding Our Minds: Why nature is so necessary during the pandemic---and how we repay the debt", arrives before the August publication of her new book, Losing Eden: Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World---and Its Ability to Heal Body and Soul.
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More Pandemic Books
The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic. Barbara Katz Rothman.
How to Make a Vaccine: An Essential Guide for COVID-19 and Beyond. John Rhodes.
The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid. Lawrence Wright.
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Books for Younger Readers (recommended for Earth Day 2021 in the April issue of Book Page.com )
Fatima's Great Outdoors. Ambreen Tariq. Ages 4 to 7.
Hello Earth: Poems to Our Planet. Joyce Sidman. Ages 5 to 9.
Once Upon Another Time. Charles Ghigna and Matt Forrest Esenwine. Ages 4 to 8.
The Outdoor Scientist: The Wonder of Observing the Natural World. Temple Grandin. Ages 8 to 12.
Treaty Words: For as Long as the Rivers Flow. Aimee Craft. Ages 10 to 17.
Wonder Walkers. Micha Archer. Ages 3 to 7.
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Mike Ochs finds common ground between religion and politics in his concern for the environment.
Politically he self-published the first "Greens Bibliography" of the English-language literature on the international Green Party movement (1989), the project for his Master of Liberal Arts in International Studies degree at Lock Haven (PA) University. He also helped plant the seeds for the Green Party of PA at that time, and remains a cyber-activist with it.
For a monthly newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County (PA), he has written the "Creation Corner Column" since 1997. It became a blog in 2011 at
He received a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.
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