Playground by Richard Powers
Review by Peter Reason I am a fan of Richard Powers. I read The Overstory four times, appreciating how the writing draws together an animist worldview with ecological activism while…
Biography & Memoir, Diaries
Ecology & Environment, Natural World
History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology
Non Fiction
Love, Anger & Betrayal: Just Stop Oil’s young climate campaigners, by Jonathan Porritt
Review by Peter Reason Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE, Eton and Oxford; one might imagine him as a pillar of the British Establishment. Then you remember he was…
Thirst: In search of freshwater – Wellcome Collection 2025, ed. Ellen Johl
Review by Peter Reason This slender collection of writing around the theme of freshwater is published by the Wellcome Collection to accompany its current exhibition of the same name, which…
Bird School: A beginner in the wood by Adam Nicolson
Review by Peter Reason ‘The first time I met a bird close-up, it was dead. A raven.’ From this grab-your-attention first line and the evocative description of this encounter, I…
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Review by Peter Reason It is very unlikely that many readers of Shiny New Books have missed Robert Macfarlane’s new book. It has been reviewed in most of the major…
The Ghost Lake by Wendy Pratt
Review by Peter Reason Ghost Lake is a paleolithic, extinct lake that lies between the Yorkshire Wolds and Scarborough. In prehistoric times it was a real lake, the centre of…
Cairn by Kathleen Jamie
Review by Peter Reason I am sitting under the old apple tree in our Orchard on a sunny summer afternoon, looking over the meadow grass swaying in the light breeze,…
Deep Water: The World in the Ocean, by James Bradley
Review by Peter Reason James Bradley, the Australian novelist and essayist, chooses an apt epigraph from Arthur C. Clarke for his book: ‘How inappropriate to call this planet “Earth”, when…
Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death, by Laura Cumming
I am a very critical reader; there are not many books that I unreservedly admire. So it is notable that when I finished reading Thunderclap, I closed the covers, turned…
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s hidden histories, by Amitav Ghosh
Review by Peter Reason The term ‘narco state’ usually refers to those countries whose economy has been taken over by the cultivation of the opium poppy and the criminal gangs…
Landscapes of Silence: From Childhood to the Arctic, by Hugh Brody
Review by Peter Reason On the first page of Landscapes of Silence is a list of the many words for snow in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit hunters and…
The Last Whale by Chris Vick
Review by Peter Reason The Last Whale is a fiction book for teens and young adults that covers serious themes in an engaging story. The narrative threads together tragedy and…
Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays, by Barry Lopez
Review by Peter Reason The late Barry Lopez is regarded by many as the doyen of travel and nature writers – although he and many others dislike these terms, preferring…
Darkness Manifesto: How light pollution threatens the ancient rhythms of life, by Johan Eklöf
Translated by Elizabeth DeNoma Review by Peter Reason I leave my front door late one evening and walk along the driveway we share with our neighbours towards the narrow unlit…
Fen, Bog and Swamp: A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis, by Annie Proulx
Review by Peter Reason I used to keep my little yacht Coral, companion of many voyages and pilgrimages, on trot moorings on the Cattewater in Plymouth. On the further side…
Jungle Nama: A story of the Sundarban & The Living Mountain: A fable for our times, by Amitav Ghosh
Reviews by Peter Reason On Christmas day my elder son gave me a copy of The Living Mountain, while my younger son a copy of Jungle Nama. They both know…
Nemesis, My Friend: Journeys through turning times by Jay Griffiths
Review by Peter Reason Nemesis is usually seen as the goddess of retribution, even of revenge, of implacable justice with no mercy, the avenger of crime and punisher of hubris….
This Sacred Life: Humanity’s place in a wounded world by Norman Wirzba
Review by Peter Reason What does it mean to see the world, and life on Earth, as sacred? How might this change our approach to life? These are questions that…
The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
Review by Peter Reason When I was a small child at primary school, we celebrated Empire Day. Children were invited—expected—to take a Union Flag to school and wave it around….
The Dawn of Everything: A new history of humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
Review by Peter Reason This book offers a revision of our understanding of human cultural history, and so opens possibilities for different, maybe more creative and liberating, arrangements for contemporary…
Smoke Hole: Looking to the wild in the time of the Spyglass by Martin Shaw
Review by Peter Reason Martin Shaw is a mythologist, storyteller, and wilderness rites-of-passage guide, a teacher of mythic imagination. Should you encounter him at a workshop, you will most likely…
On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason
Translated by Lytton Smith Review by Peter Reason This book focuses on two things that are changing beyond recognition in this era of rapid ecological change: Time and Water. Time…
The Nightingale: Notes on a songbird, by Sam Lee
Review by Peter Reason Sam Lee is a renowned song collector, interpreter, and singer of folk songs from Britain and Ireland; he has an abiding interest in wilderness studies and…
Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert
Review by Peter Reason Elizabeth Kolbert is a celebrated American journalist, staff writer for the New Yorker. Her work focuses unflinchingly on the ecological challenges of our time, as can…