Looking for a good book that will leave you better informed, if not a bit more hopeful about the future?  The books below were read by the LCAN Book Club.  Click the cover of any books that interest you for a brief summary from Goodreads.  Available in hard and/or soft cover, if not e-book, too.  Buy a copy or try the Louisville Free Public Library e-catalog.

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. In California, wildfires now rage year-round, destroying thousands of homes. Across the US, "500-year" storms pummel communities month after month, and floods displace tens of millions annually. This is only a preview of the changes to come. And they are coming fast. Without a revolution in how billions of...

This technique can save the earth—while resulting in a beautiful garden, too! Climate Conscious Gardener picks up where Brooklyn Botanic Gardening’s groundbreaking Environmental Gardener left off, giving homeowners, landscapers, and public park managers practical strategies for greening the planet through sustainable and organic gardening. In simple terms, an introductory section explains what happens when the balance of carbon and nitrogen in the atmosphere goes awry, and how plants, soil...

Provocative, personal, and inspirational, The Green Collar Economy is not a dire warning but rather a substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country — the failing economy and our devastated environment. From a distance, it appears that these two problems are separate, but when we look closer, the connection becomes unmistakable. In The Green Collar Economy, acclaimed activist and political advisor Van Jones delivers a real solution that both rescues our economy...

Called “one of the nation’s most effective communicators on climate change” by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our changing planet. A Canadian climate scientist living in Texas, she negotiates distrust of data, indifference to imminent threats, and resistance to proposed solutions with ease. Over the past fifteen years Hayhoe has found that the most important thing we can do to address climate change is talk about it—and she wants to...

A revelatory look at our national power grid--how it developed, its current flaws, and how it must be completely reimagined for our fast-approaching energy future. America's electrical grid, an engineering triumph of the twentieth century, is turning out to be a poor fit for the present. It's not just that the grid has grown old and is now in dire need of basic repair. Today, as we invest great hope in new energy sources--solar, wind, and other alternatives--the grid is what stands most...