Bill McKibben’s Nonfiction Picks

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This is big. Mother Jones just merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting, and this is the first time we’re asking for the donations we rely on. So we lay it all out for you in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” and we need to raise the First $500,000 in online donations by June 22. It won’t be easy. Please help if you can.

Courtesy Bill Mckibben

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For a special section in our May/June issue, we asked some of our favorite writers about their favorite nonfiction books. Here are author and Mother Jones contributor Bill McKibben’s answers:

MJ: Which science-fiction book do you think is most interesting in the way it grapples with the future of our planet?
BM: The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is really a very long book about how to make communities work (or not).

MJ: Which book (past or present) has given you the most hope?
BM: The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.

MJ: Which nonfiction book do you foist upon all of your friends and relatives? Why?
BM: Anything by Wendell Berry, the finest writer and thinker in the English language (and maybe some other languages, but being a typical American I wouldn’t know about that).

MJ: Which nonfiction book have you reread the most times? What’s so good about it?
BM: Walden, maybe—it’s as rich and unbottomed as Scripture.