Great Adult Books, selected by the Blueberry Committee

Title: Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conservations with Black Environmentalists
By: Leah Penniman
Published: 2023

Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, reminds us that ecological humility is an intrinsic part of Black cultural heritage. This anthology brings together today’s most respected and influential Black environmentalist voices —leaders who have cultivated the skill of listening to the Earth —to share the lessons they have learned.

Call Number: 333.72 Black

Title: Better Living Through Birding : Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
By: Christian Cooper
Published: 2023

Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up.

Call Number: B Coope.C Coope.C

Title: Brave the Wild River: the Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon
By: Melissa L. Sevigny
Published: 2023

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off down the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious expedition leader and three amateur boatmen. With its churning rapids, sheer cliffs, and boat-shattering boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. But for Clover and Jotter, it held a tantalizing appeal: no one had surveyed the Grand Canyon’s plants, and they were determined to be the first.

Call number: 979.132 Sev

Title: The Devil’s Element: Phosphorous and a World Out of Balance
By: Dan Egan
Published: 2023

Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. Egan has written an essential and eye-opening account that urges us to pay attention to one of the most perilous but little-known environmental issues of our time.

Call Number: 577.14 Egan.D

Title: Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
By: Camille T Dungy
Published: 2023

Poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts her seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. At the nexus of nature writing and environmental justice, this book encourages readers to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.

Call Number: 635.09788 Dungy C

Title: The Vaster Wilds
By: Lauren Groff
Published: 2023

A servant girl escapes from the siege and famine of Jamestown in the late winter of 1610, into the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Call Number: Fiction Groff L.