Bill McKibben’s Nonfiction Picks

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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.