After a quick scroll through my Goodreads, I've just confirmed that I've never read a nonfiction book that wasn't for school or a book club. Unless it was a narrative memoir, which only sort of counts. Until now.
I don't think that's that abnormal for my generation... after all, we'll read all our nonfiction books once we're out of school, right? But if it is surprising, please don't judge me. I've started a handful of nonfiction books, especially environment-related ones, but never been able to really get invested enough to finish.
But Losing Earth: A Recent History has changed that for me.
I wanted this book before I knew its title. Through bingeing ClimateTown's fantastic videos, I came across his video detailing The Time America Almost Stopped Climate Change. I wasn't much surprised that the US government knew about climate change in 1979 and spent the next decade failing to act despite the hard work of scientists and activists. But I was surprised at how strong of a story it was, how clearly the failures were all laid out. When I visited The Book Loft a while later, I was set on finding a book that would give me more information, and once I saw Losing Earth I knew it was what I was looking for.
The book was everything I hoped it would be. It told a detailed narrative of US climate politics from 1979 - when climate models were first being developed and activist Rafe Pomerance started talking to politians about global warming - to 1989 - the end of a decade of attempts to curb emissions that were ultimately shot down. Despite the heavy nature of the book, it continued to be engaging and broke the topic up into short chapters that were perfect for my Gen Z screenager brain. I give this book 5 stars and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about how we got to this stage of climate inaction.
Things I still want to write about: