Highly recommended

Sad but true—summer’s almost over. When autumn is in the air, I always get the feeling that it’s time to crack open the books. Here is a recommended reading list of books I’ve read in the past year that have edified and inspired me.

Always fascinating and at times disturbing, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” by Michael Pollan (2006) sets out to answer the question, “What should we have for dinner?” A fine writer and one of the leading authorities on the complex issues surrounding food, Pollan investigates the dominance of corn and petroleum in “industrial food;” examines the upscale food-store chain, Whole Foods; visits a small Virginia farm that doesn’t use pesticides, antibiotics or synthetic fertilizers; and forages for and cooks a meal of morels and wild boar. His book reveals the political, social and environmental implications of the choices we make when we eat.

Part memoir and part how-to book, bestselling novelist Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” (2007) chronicles her family’s adventure in eating food grown only on their farm in Virginia or within a 100-mile radius. They can tomatoes, raise and butcher chickens, make cheese and learn to live without oranges and bananas. Daughter Camille provides recipes and husband Stephen Hopp writes sidebars on industrial agriculture and ecology. Written with Kingsolver’s characteristic wit, the book is a celebration of home-grown food.

Jane Goodall’s “Harvest for Hope” also examines what we eat. Particularly disturbing is the chapter on what we feed our children and its long-term effects on their health. But Goodall’s title says it all: at the end of each chapter she gives us hope by telling us how we can all be part of positive change.

It’s hard to stomach the atrocities delineated in Robert Kennedy Jr.’s “Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy” (2004) without a sense of despair. From accounts of mountain-top removal to details of how the Bush administration has suppressed scientific reports, eviscerated the EPA, rewritten the nation’s environmental laws to favor industry and appointed corporate executives to oversee the regulation of their former industries, this is a tough but essential read. Kennedy’s examination justifies his indictment of Bush as the “worst environmental president” in history.

If only George Bush and those of his ilk would read “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life of Earth” (2006). Written to an imaginary Southern Baptist minister as a plea to respect science as well as religion, Harvard professor and Pulitzer-Prize winning entomologist E. O. Wilson eloquently and lovingly describes the miracles and mysteries of Nature’s diverse creations while making an impassioned plea to stop the senseless destruction of life on the planet.

In “The World Without Us” (2007), award-winning science journalist Alan Weisman poses the provocative question, “Could nature ever obliterate all our traces?” and predicts what would happen if humans beings suddenly disappeared from earth. By describing how life has regenerated in many formerly devastated landscapes, he illustrates how human behavior has destroyed various ecosystems and reveals Earth’s extraordinary power to heal itself.

If your brain needs a reading break, watch the 20-minute video, “The Story of Stuff” ( storyofstuff.com ), a comprehensive explanation of how our unbridled consumerism affects us and our environment. Then visit You Tube for “The End of Suburbia,” a chilling analysis of our current unsustainable reliance on the automobile and fossil fuel.

After you’ve boggled your mind, recycle your book. Pass it on to a friend or donate it to your public library or favorite school. Books for Africa accepts donations in an effort to end the book famine on that continent. Visit booksforafrica.org .

-Marcia Nehemiah