There’s a lot of dire green news out there. Species dying. Glaciers shrinking. Fish better off snorkeling than breathing their own water.

So, when a book comes along that paints a sunrise on the smog-choked horizon, it merits a look.  Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes brings us Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet. In a nod to the Rockefeller and Carnegie-type Robber Barons who drove the Industrial Revolution, “eco barons” refers to the band of visionaries who are using their wealth, energy and celebrity to push the world in a green direction.

There’s Douglas Tompkins, the former founder and CEO of the Esprit fashion empire who uses his fortune to preserve Patagonian rainforest. There’s Roxanne Quimby, the founder of Burt’s Bees, who sold her stake on her multi-million dollar cosmetics empire to save the great Maine Woods. But not all the eco barons are wealthy emperor-types. There’s Terry Tamminen, a former pool boy who is now the head of the California EPA and Carole Allen, a single mother, who has marshaled an army of schoolchildren to save endangered turtles from extinction by fishing fleets.

Through inspiring stories of individuals making a difference, Humes presents a timely and hopeful book. Worth a read.

Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe opens with a horrifyingly poetic description of a monkfish as the “Quasimodo of the Atlantic” whose “uncooked flesh, especially the liver can be virtually ambulant with marine worms”.

The book goes on in squirm-inducing detail to educate readers about why we shouldn’t be eating the fish we are eating and how, if we want to save our oceans, we’d all be well-advised to become bottomfeeders.

Expertly written, enthralling and suspenseful, this book goes deep into the reasons most top-of-the-food-chain fish aren’t sustainable and also lays out the facts about heavy metal contamination in many popular fish, like tuna and swordfish.

In addition to being an invaluable resource for eating fish sustainably, the book has huge entertainment value. The author is a true seafood lover with the mind of a social geographer. He has a feel for describing the fisherpeople he meets on his travels as he searches for marine life he can safely enjoy without emptying the oceans.

Along the way, readers are treated to gorgeous descriptions of Belon oysters with French butter and rye bread, flame-kissed Portuguese sardines and micro-scale sustainably-farmed shrimp in a coconut curry, while getting an intimate peek into the lives of the people who harvest, produce and cook the fish.

The book’s journey around the world is organized around a species or a dish that is a central part of the culture of each place the author visits. The opening chapter is set in the fine restaurants of Manhattan and centers on the monkfish, a severely overfished bottomfeeder that nobody would have considered eating until Julia Child popularized it.

While in New York, he provides a sharp, spot-on critique of top chefs who speak convincingly about sustainable fisheries while filling their menus with overfished species.

Grescoe visits the Chesapeake Bay and France in the chapter about oysters. He goes to England to discuss the reasons behind the demise of the cod, ending that chapter with the assertion that if moratoriums are not placed on the cod fishery, the next generation will be eating jellyfish and chips.

Next, he heads to the Mediterranean in search of the rascasse, the essential ingredient to bouillabaisse and a cousin to this hemisphere’s endangered snapper. Tokyo is the setting for his investigation of the mighty blue fin tuna and India for a sickening description of the ponds that provide the ubiquitous, cheap shrimp on those all-you-can-eat platters. You don’t want to know about this, but you need to.

This book has unequivocally changed my eating habits forever.

Though for years I’ve carried the Seafood Watch card to avoid buying endangered fish, I must admit that I have ordered off restaurant menus without thinking too hard about that sushi on my plate or the type of fish in those tacos. No more.

Now I will eat delicious sardines, aquacultured clams, oysters, and vegetarian species of farmed fish, squid, Pacific halibut, and the occasional black cod.

It is hard to learn there are so many things I love that I can no longer eat, like canned tuna, but I’d like to save something besides jellyfish for the next generation and help preserve the vibrant fishing and eating cultures that I learned about in this book and in my own travels.

The end of the book provides useful information on what to eat when, including fishing methods. This is important because some fish are only smart choices if they are caught in ways that don’t harm the environment or take a lot of bycatch.

Bottomfeeder will break your heart if you are a lover of seafood and our ocean environments. Yet that’s exactly why everyone should read it. Our oceans might just depend on it. It will be nearly impossible to come away unchanged by this book. After reality sunk in, I felt empowered by my knowledge and inspired to do the right thing all the time. I will no longer look the other way for the sake of one good meal.

There’s green action. Then there’s green soul. You can change your light bulbs, recycle and buy organic. Or you can choose to be green – living with consciousness and integrity – deep in your very core.

The book Most Good, Least Harm explores this difference, which the author, Zoe Weil, dubs MOGO. She urges readers to investigate their actions and impact in order to live and create a life that works for the highest good. In her own words:

This is not a how-to book with prescribed choices for doing the most good and least harm. It is, instead, a call to define for yourself your deepest values and to live accordingly.

But the author also takes into account the conflicts this can cause. For example, she used a computer to write her book and educate about MOGO, but is aware of the toxic chemicals used in computer production. She promotes critical thinking for all of us to address these challenges in our everyday lives and, after analyzing the situation, work for the highest good.

The seven keys to MOGO are:
Live your Epitaph
Pursue Joy through Service
Make Connections and Self-Reflect
Model Your Message and Work for Change
Find and Create Community
Take Responsibility
Strive for Balance

For those who could use some down-to-earth guidance beyond the rhetoric, a helpful questionnaire and action plan is included, plus pages of detailed information and a list of online resources to help you on your way.

Living your epitaph – it puts things in a diffferent perspective, doesn’t it? Clearly, creating a life of the highest integrity requires a great deal of introspection and the changes required can seem intimidating. But the author is not asking for overnight change; rather, she seeks to inspire us to think and act from a higher place and make the changes we feel we need to make, at our own pace and one at a time. MOGO is a process, and it’s one we urgently need.

Author Zoe Weil

Living in an energy efficient home made of eco-friendly materials is fast becoming a dream for many of us. No longer do we wish for a perfectly trimmed lawn and a white picket fence, but rather efficient appliances, well-placed windows and good insulation. Oh, and a xeriscaped yard.

And if you just so happen to be in the eco-home market, check out Sid Davis’ Your Eco-Friendly Home – Buying, Building or Remodeling Green. This book’s in-the-box approach serves its readers well and is engaging and accessible, with inexperienced home buyers in mind – but even experienced buyers will find something to chew on, because looking to build, buy or upgrade to green brings up new issues that most people haven’t even thought about. Davis meticulously describes securing financing, researching agents and contractors, retaining architects, using engineers, and many other traditional means.

Conveniently enough, this book is divided into three parts, each one focusing on Building, Buying or Remodeling green. Each section is full of information and examples.  Here’s a partial list of topics from the very long and detailed table of contents:

Finding and Qualifying for Eco-Friendly Financing
Finding an Eco-Friendly Agent
Shopping for an Eco-Friendly Home on Your Own
Successful Strategies For Making an Offer on a Home
Finding and Working With a Green Builder
Planning Your Environmentally Friendly Home
Protecting Yourself with Good Paperwork
Finding and Working with a Green Architect
Paying the Contractor and Managing Your Costs
Green Landscaping
Determining Where and What to Plant and Landscaping Mistakes to Avoid
Remodeling Your Home’s Exterior and Interior with Eco-Friendly Systems and Materials

This practical guide really covers it all. I even shared this book with my husband, who spent over 14 years working as a contractor and has owned a few homes himself, and he thinks it’s a great resource, too. His personal suggestion is that anyone considering remodeling would be best served by hiring a skilled local carpenter rather than a large licensed contractor, simply because the carpenter will be more willing to work with you and your family step-by-step to make sure your needs are met. It is your local carpenter that is familiar with the local planning department, local materials, local suppliers, and local specialty labor. And keeping it local is a lot of what eco-friendly living is all about.

There’s so much to think about when raising your children green in a brown world. Food, clothing, shelter – these are just the beginning. What do you do when your child comes home with lice? How do you regulate TV and internet? Any conscious parent will want guidance for these issues in raising their child as holistically and organically as possible.

Lynda Fassa, author of Green Kids, Sage Families provides over 240 pages of such guidance. And the author has taken into account your busyness as a parent and provides useful information in bite-sized chunks that are accessible and fun to read. You can literally flip through this book and pick out what you need in the moment for healthy snack ideas, easy green home improvement, school-related issues, and arts and crafts for toddlers to teens. (Check out Lynda Fassa’s Green Babies, Sage Moms if you’re a new parent of a little one).

Here’s some of what you’ll find out in this book:

How to host an eco-friendly party
The truth behind food labels
Conscious consumerism for teens
Easy, homemade bath and body products for kids
Ideas for family meal plans
Green ideas for the holidays
Toxic products you absolutely must not allow in your house

Green Kids, Sage Families is a well-rounded read, with plenty suggestions for those on a budget (as many families are) and lots of expert guidance from green CEOs, businessmoms and other “green gurus” with real world experience to help your family thrive organically in the real world.