My mother, Hilde Jacobsthal Goldberg, grew up mostly in Amsterdam when her family moved there from Berlin in 1929. She was just four.
The Jacobsthals and the Franks got to know each other in Amsterdam after the Frank family arrived in 1933. Hilde knew both Anne and Margot. Margot was the same age as Hilde, and they became close. After the war Otto Frank became a father figure to Hilde and eventually my godfather. My sisters and I saw a lot of him and his second wife, Fritzi, until his death in 1980.
Motherland: Growing Up with the Holocaust, chronicles my mother’s life through World War II and briefly post-war. Hers is an extraordinary story of resistance, heroism and tragedy. It even has romantic and comic elements, as lives do even in the darkest of times. She and her older brother Jo were resisters from the beginning. My mother saved small children as a teenager when she was in training at a nursery, or crèche; my uncle became part of the Dutch-Paris resistance network in Belgium, where Hilde joined him after a dangerous escape from the Netherlands in 1943. She and Jo survived in hiding and in the Resistance, but they learned after the war that their parents had been murdered at Auschwitz.
I’m the oldest of three sisters, and our family history haunted me (and us) from birth, it seemed. Motherland is an attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust for those of us now called G2, second-generation children of survivors. The Holocaust is my family’s story, my mother’s story, and now mine, which is the dilemma of my generation.
This year we’re at the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. That’s just one average human lifetime, but people are beginning to forget.
In the time since this book was published, I’ve spoken about it in schools, universities, on radio broadcasts, and in other venues and have discovered that it’s always relevant to our times, perhaps now more than ever. We’re all part of a human world that changes under our feet, and I hope that this book will help to keep readers vigilant and aware, as my mother, uncle, and father were—people who engaged with the horrors of their time and never lost hope, love of life, or compassion. The resisters in Belgium signed themselves “Courage!,” and that’s what I hope readers will take away from Motherland.
In a dusty corner of southeastern California, the contradictions and tensions of our move from a fossil fuel past to a clean energy future are on full display.
Imperial Valley hosts the Salton Sea, a landlocked body of water whose salinity and toxicity have caused it to be labeled an “environmental disaster zone.” As its waters have receded, exposed dust has kicked up, leading to childhood asthma rates at least two to three times national average.
The local economy has historically thrived on the exploitation of agricultural labor, including the regular use of migrant and undocumented workers. It’s also a sort of poster child for “racial capitalism.” Local museums celebrate “Pioneers’ Days,” obscuring the fact that indigenous groups lived here for thousands of years. The population is about 85 percent Latinos—a testimony to the demand for cheaper labor—but that supermajority is close to poverty and far from power.
And it has enough lithium under the surface to redo the entire American auto fleet to electricity and have 100 million batteries left over.
Little wonder that it has attracted the supercharged interest of corporate investors and state officials. Adding fuel to the fire are enthusiastic environmentalists: because the lithium would be pulled from geothermal reserves rather than generated from hard rock mining or desert evaporation ponds, this promises to be the cleanest, greenest method of extraction on the planet.
But while officials are busy renaming the locale “Lithium Valley” and billing it as the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” local communities are worried that they will be run over by development and left behind in the boom. The initial skirmishes between community and corporations were about how and how much to tax the emerging lithium companies. Since then, lawsuits have been filed to provoke more extensive environmental reviews of the extraction process. And most recently, community groups have come together in a formal alliance—Valle Unido—to fight for guaranteed community benefits.
It might seem like a set of issues confined to this hardscrabble part of the Golden State. But the issue of who wins and who loses runs all the way through our energy transition. The labor strikes that roiled the auto industry in 2023, the current fights against the Trump administration’s rejection of environmental justice policies, and many other related struggles all seek to lift up communities that have been left behind and kept behind.
And while it is easy to think in the current moment that electric vehicles (EVs) will stall and demand for batteries will fall, consider how far along auto manufacturers are on the road to leaving behind oil or how red state governors that forcefully reject climate change realities still eagerly accept climate-related dollars. So EV’s and clean energy are likely here to stay. The question is whether equity will be part of the future—or will such concerns be sacrificed by companies eager for a profit or downplayed by environmentalists eager for a rapid transition.
On this Earth Day 2025, it is important to remember for those of us committed to sustainability that not all that is green will necessarily deliver for communities that have been overexposed and underemployed. While a move away from fossil fuels and toward a better future clearly requires changing the source of power, a truly just future will come only if we also have a strategy for changing the balance of power.
10 Books to Read and Look Forward to this Earth Day
Earth Day is celebrated by more than a billion people globally. With each passing year, it becomes more important to understand the state of our planet, what new issues are contributing to the climate crisis, and how we can bring awareness to these arising situations and implement change at every level. It can be overwhelming to stay informed on all the threats to our environment, but focusing on learning about certain aspects of the climate crisis and finding ways to make sustainable changes at the individual level or in your community can have meaningful positive impacts. You may choose to focus on this year’s Earth Day theme “Our Power, Our Planet”—which speaks to the importance of renewable energy—or rather focus on climate migration, agricultural reform, the impact on minority groups, or community-focused solutions, all topics featured within this list. Whether you read one of these books or a few, you can learn more about how to promote and implement environmental action and sustainability, as well as staying up to date on more climate conscious titles to be released this fall.
Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future
Charging Forward uncovers the story of California’s Salton Sea region—home to some of the country’s worst environmental health conditions but also ground zero for the race to extract lithium for electric vehicle and renewable energy storage markets. Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor explain that we cannot achieve lithium-powered clean energy solutions without first addressing environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and racial injustice in our country.
From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture
Award-winning author Stephanie Anderson addresses the root causes of our unsustainable, profit-hungry industrialized food system before sharing inspiring, groundbreaking narratives of hope. From the Ground Up sheds light on the stories of diverse female farmers, entrepreneurs, community organizers, scientists, and political leaders who are fighting climate change and championing regenerative agriculture.
Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment
In this powerful examination of the controversial energy extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, Wenonah Hauter takes us through the history of the industry and the technologies that make it possible. With a wealth of new data, Hauter exposes the dangers that fracking is causing to the environment and human health and debunks its supposed economic benefits.
Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)
In the first book of its kind, Losing Our Cool examines how indoor climate control is helping to send our outdoor climate out of control, while also contributing to adverse health effects. However, Stan Cox proposes a solution—combining traditional cooling methods with new technologies can keep us, and the planet, more comfortable.
The World We Need: Stories and Lessons from America’s Unsung Environmental Movement
In The World We Need, journalist Audrea Lim reports on America’s overlooked, yet effective, grassroots environmental groups. By highlighting largely forgotten American communities where the effects of the climate crisis have been hitting for years, Lim shows us how we can learn from seasoned climate activists and offers an inspired new model for the larger environmental movement.
The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists
In this original take on the sustainability movement, Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan argue that wealthy urbanites have capitalized on going green, making sustainability unsustainable and inaccessible to everyone but the elite minority. By contrast, ordinary people are making an impact by coming together and advocating for housing and food production, transport, and waste management, among other things.
We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
An intimate, powerful collection, We Are the Middle of Forever calls upon Indigenous voices to be at the center of conversations about the environmental crisis. This book draws from interviews with people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities who have adapted and persevered through radical changes to the planet for generations, sharing their knowledge, observations, and advice on maintaining and protecting all life on Earth.
Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors
Published in collaboration with Grist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change and solutions, Afterglow contains a collection of short stories that imagine a radically different climate future. With influences from literary movements such as Afrofuturism, hopepunk, and solarpunk, these stories imagine a future where no one is left behind in pursuit of a better, healthier world. In these hopeful stories, fiction shows us how to create a better reality.
The Atlas of Disappearing Places: Our Coasts and Oceans in the Climate Crisis
With its paperback edition set to release in September, The Atlas of Disappearing Places is a beautiful, striking display of global warming’s impact on our globe. Painted with water-soluble ink on sheets of dried seaweed, the message of environmental activism starts from the page itself, as well as the maps and information creatively displayed on them. This stunning book is a deeply researched portrait of where our planet is now and what its potential futures may be.
Shelter from the Storm: How Climate Change Is Creating a New Era of Migration
Set to release in January, Shelter from the Storm provides historical perspective on the massive human displacement caused by climate change, and details how millions more around the world will have to move in the coming decades. With hard-hitting journalism, Julian Hattem explores human geography all over the world, and how likely it is to change.
Martin Luther King Jr. worked to transform American society. The impact of his legacy reverberates today, posing fundamental questions about the unresolved problems he confronted.
Born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership in the Civil Right Movement spanned from age twenty-six until his assassination at age thirty-nine on April 4, 1968 when he was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
It might seem inconceivable that more could be written, or new things said, about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. But as with Rosa Parks, renowned scholar and bestselling author Jeanne Theoharis has uncovered a totally new and undiscovered chapter in King’s life and career, one that confronts the King of popular memory who vanquished Jim Crow in the South and expands our understanding of his work as an activist and radical thinker. Theoharis also transforms what we know about Coretta Scott King, underscoring her central role in shaping her husband’s thinking and activism.
In the myth-shattering book King of the North, Theoharis upends the dominant story of King’s life, focusing in on his early life and time outside of the South as he crisscrossed the country from the Northeast to the West Coast, challenging school segregation, police brutality, housing segregation, and job discrimination. Here is a King whose work speaks to our present moment more than ever.
Explore key moments in King’s life and career in the timeline below and read an excerpt from King of the North.
Labor’s Partisans is a retrospective on the evolution of the labor movement, as it has evolved through the pages of Dissent, the venerable socialist magazine. This is an important time to evaluate the history of the movement, as a new and vibrant generation of young people have come to see the unions as a vehicle through which many of their most radical aspirations can be realized, so a reflection on our shared history, especially one taken from a socialist perspective, is both timely and useful.
One thing startled and surprised me when I reread Dissent’s labor reportage from the 1950s through the 1980s. Dissent writers largely moved from a sharp critique to something close to an apology when it came to their evaluation of the unions in those years. In 1954, when Dissent was founded, most of its writers had come of age in the Depression years, and they judged the United Auto Workers, the Steelworkers, and the other million-member unions of that era by a radical yardstick that took the 1930s sit-down strikes, mass demonstrations, and the quest for both workers’ control and a labor party as the measure by which the postwar labor movement was to be evaluated. Dissent socialists offered organized labor no celebration of its size and potency during this mid-twentieth-century era, the years of its greatest historical success.
All that changed by the 1970s when labor faced far more difficult headwinds. Even as the unions became more stolid—with the AFL-CIO itself supportive of the Vietnam war and hostile to a new generation of multiracial rank and file militants—Dissent writers softened their critique. Michael Harrington was the most influential writer of this sort. By the 1970s he was recognized as the nation’s leading socialist spokesperson and he defended the idea that the American working class was a social formation, Black, white, and brown, blue collar or not, that still resembled that which Marx had identified a century before. The working class was under attack, but in its defense, Harrington gave the labor movement itself a fulsome pass, ignoring the undemocratic structure of many unions and arguing that the Democratic Party, then moving sharply to the right, was the most appropriate home for labor political action. On points, Harrington may have won the argument, especially with the New Leftists then beginning to take posts within the unions, but his perspective also demobilized a generation of young militants.
And that’s still a problem. Today, it is hard to even dream about an independent party based on the unions, and most labor organizations throw themselves into support of the Democrats every two years, a necessary but defensive engagement seeking to forestall GOP authoritarianism and outright union-busting reaction. But as we saw in the 2024 election, that strategy serves to demobilize many potential voters, in unions or out. On the left, a defense of the status quo is no recipe for electoral victory.
That has put the union movement, certainly in its more radical and oppositional guise, back in the headlines and also into the consciousness of many American progressives. In recent years Dissent labor writers have offered more words to the organization of baristas, home health care workers, and university teaching assistants than to autoworkers and construction workers. Faced with intransigent hostility from virtually all corporate managers, the unions have failed to actually grow as a proportion of the entire workforce, but that has not been an obstacle to the remarkable new popularity of the union idea, especially among America’s service sector youth.
Some progressives disdain any kind of organization—union, party, or otherwise—as putting a wet blanket over the militant upsurges that periodically shake the polity. Upheavals like A Day without Immigrants in 2006, Occupy in 2011, the Women’s March of 2017, and Black Lives Matter engage millions of activists. Pundits and politicians take notice, and such manifestations can each create a new generation of activists. Trade unionists can only envy the energy unleashed in these movements.
But consciousness is episodic; it rises and falls and gets distorted. While Dissent writers cheered on these episodes of social movement activism, they also understood something fundamental: that consciousness and organization each sustain the other and thereby create a powerful counterweight to the elites that rule economy and politics. And that is something unique to the unions, which may be why people in power are almost always hostile to organized labor. It is only by seeing where we started from that we can tell how far we’ve come.
Based on years of research by the criminal justice organization Worth Rises, The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits by Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises is a meticulous exposé of who profits from incarceration. An essential primer, The Prison Industry maps the range of ways in which private corporations, often with their government partners, make money off incarceration. It further details the gross extraction of wealth from incarcerated people and their families, who have been brutalized by overpolicing, mass incarceration, and mass surveillance.
This Discussion Guide, authored by Brianna Gibson and Bianca Tylek, was created to help organizers, educators, students, people curious about abolition, individuals, book clubs, and study groups utilize The Prison Industry in community with others, as a tool for deeper reflection and self-interrogation, and to inspire concrete actions.
You can read the guide below or download a free copy.
Immigration authorities detained longtime immigrant rights activist, Jeanette Vizguerra, in Denver last week. Jeanette has lived in Colorado for more than twenty years and is at imminent risk of being torn away from her children, grandchildren, and beloved community. Jeanette made national headlines in 2017, when she took sanctuary at the First Unitarian Church in Denver for which Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Vizguerra had noticed that unmarked vehicles had been following her for several days, and upon detaining her yesterday, the agents remarked, “We finally got you.”
I spent time with Jeanette in 2017 and compiled a testimonial in her own words for my book, American Hate: Survivors Speak Out. Jeanette discussed her mixed status family, life in sanctuary, fears of deportation, and the many ways she was fighting back. You can read that chapter below.
Women’s History Month is a time to honor women’s contributions to history, culture, and society. That is what makes the month of March the perfect time to find books to add to your reading list that center women authors, narratives, or experiences in both fiction and nonfiction. Women’s history is honored not only by recognizing prominent women in our history, but by becoming more informed on experiences and challenges that women have faced and continue to face in their own lives and in society. In this list, we recognize the diversity of women’s experiences by offering a range of topics featuring The New Press books written by and about women. Whether you are looking to see culture and society through a feminist lens, indulge in literary fiction with women protagonists, or become informed on the history and politics that affect women in this country, you will be sure to find a book to engage with this Women’s History Month.
Intersectional and Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought
This first category of books acknowledges the feminist perspective and how it can change our way of considering ordinary topics of art, literature, and social and natural sciences. Books like Art on My Mind and Words of Fire use intersectional feminism to discuss racism, classism, and identity politics, among other things. Titles such as Experiments in Knowing and Gender on Planet Earth consider the gender inequality present in quantitative and qualitative methodologies, showing how gender biases seep into all realms of study.
Influential Women’s Memoirs and Biographies
The books in this category celebrate the lives and achievements of some of the most influential women in history. From figures like Devaki Jain, who revolutionized feminist economics in India, to the antiwar activist and actress Jane Fonda, below are the life stories of women who made great contributions to their societies.
Literary Fiction
Another way of engaging with women’s history is by understanding women’s personal lives and experiences. Pulled from The New Press’s list of literature in translation, below is a list of literary fiction written by women authors featuring female protagonists and their experiences. These authors have contributed to culture and society
through these diverse literary titles.
History, Politics, and Social Justice
Ultimately, Women’s History Month is a time to reflect on the courage and resilience of women in history as they have worked to make the world a more equitable place, while acknowledging the work that still needs to be done. These titles by women authors explain the struggles that women experience internationally, as well as in this country, and what we can do about it. Whether you are seeking to learn more about how politics, the economy, or our justice system pertains to women, these titles will be sure to leave you more informed.
Now more than ever, urban residents have the desire to live greener, more sustainable lives and are making efforts to achieve that future. However, in their new book, The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists, authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan make the argument that that environmental sustainability has been co-opted by the urban elite, leading cities to become unsustainable and inaccessible to the working class. The Sustainability Class shows us that sustainability can only be achieved when it is made to be for everyone.
In the interview below, authors Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan speak on the process of researching and writing The Sustainability Class, their own relationships to sustainability, and what we can do to participate in ecological solutions.
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What inspired you to write this book and when did the project begin?
This book was inspired by an increasing contradiction we have been noticing between lifestyles that promote green living and how they dispossess people of their lands, gentrify urban neighborhoods, and encourage extremely wasteful activity.
In Montreal, where we live, a new university campus in a migrant neighborhood of Montreal was being advertised as green, with bike lanes, trees planted, and LEED-certified buildings, while also contributing to, and doing nothing about, an astronomical rise in rents, leading to evictions. We felt something about this picture was wrong.
One of us (Vijay) wrote an article for Al Jazeera in 2019, entitled: “Why a hipster vegan green tech lifestyle is not sustainable.” This generated a lot of interest. People shared concerns with green developments leading whole neighborhoods being branded for real-estate speculation. Following that article, Vijay was approached by Roísín Davis of Haymarket Books, who suggested Vijay write a book about this phenomenon. Vijay then teamed up with Aaron (a longtime friend, scholar of green gentrification, and fellow peer in the discipline of ecological economics). Roísín supported us pitching a book to publishers. We began writing the book for The New Press in 2022. We were advised by Roísín and others to consider looking into the lifestyle and green tech culture in California as a starting point, especially in Los Angeles. Thus we began our journey of “looking for ecology” in the heart of Los Angeles.
How did you find each other as co-authors and what was the process like for writing the book together?
Aaron and I were graduates of an ecological economics lab led by Professor Nicolas Kosoy at McGill—a mentor who taught us both never to be afraid to speak truth to power. Aaron had already been very actively involved in journalism and the student movement against tuition hikes, as well as in degrowth scholarship. He had also started an online magazine about environmental justice, Uneven Earth, which Vijay also became an editor for. Our friendship, common interests, outlook rooted in a social and political lens around ecology and economics, and our interest in writing outside of academia for broader audiences made it a natural fit.
We wrote the book in a truly collaborative way: We would share thoughts, ideas, news stories, artwork, and reflections on a social media channel, together with another friend, the journalist and photographer Neal Rockwell, who joined us in Los Angeles. These led to a kind of brainstorming on how to organize the book and what emphasis to place. Our writing of the book involved breaking down chapters into bite-size themes or talking points, which one of us would draft, and the other would complement or take on new directions. While occasionally one of us would push back on the others’ reflections, in most cases, we were very much on the same page.
Can you give us a brief description of what the sustainability class is and why you felt it was important to write about?
The sustainability class, in a nutshell, is the people who might be middle- or upper-middle-class, working (often in urban areas) within the creative or professional and managerial sectors, and who have a desire to address contemporary environmental problems, from climate change to biodiversity loss. We understand the sustainability class as prioritizing technological solutions and economic growth as the key to addressing ecological and climate breakdown; focusing inwardly on lifestyle through wellness, well-being, and self-care through “lighter footprint” consumptive choices, and having faith in existing political institutions to administer or manage environmental crises (for example, the UN or NGOs like The Nature Conservancy). What brings these values together is that class is rarely part of the picture: sustainability is bought into, innovated, or managed, but never led by working-class people—who, by definition, lead much more sustainable lives than the sustainability class.
We call the ideology of the sustainability class the PIE, an acronym for “purity”, “innovation,” and “efficiency”—in which proximity to an unspoiled, pristine, and depopulated “nature” is paired with technological fantasies such as carbon-neutral megacities in the desert, and “innovating” our way out of any and every obstacle. We refer to the vision of a PIE in the sky, because the “sky” is often some other place far away or in some other time—where the impacts of resource extraction and waste can take place with complete disregard to people in the Global South, or in marginalized communities in wealthy countries as well. It is also a kind of inward escape that evacuates politics or a desire to confront unfair and uneven power relations. This is because they stand to benefit from existing power relations through their class position.
We think it is important to write about the sustainability class because attention to class is too often ignored when discussing environmental issues. This is today creating an increasing divide between the desire to engage with the seriousness of climate and ecological collapse, and the everyday challenges of making ends meet. In short, the sustainability class (of academics, tech startups, NGOs, and government technocrats, among others) has been prefiguring the future for wealthy and entitled people, at the expense of a vast majority of humanity. Even so, that same class may not itself take part in that exclusive, eco-apartheid future, as incomes collapse, and the middle class sees its privileges and security decline in the coming era of stagnating growth, economic disruption, and war.
How did you come to identify yourselves as members of the sustainability class?
We identify ourselves as members of the sustainability class by our class position first and foremost. We both come from families that helped us out financially in various ways, such as through supporting our tuition at university. This made it easier to study and become educated without having to work to pay for it. We both share aesthetic preferences around cycling, being fit, eating well, recycling, and so on. We both live in a city in the settler nation of Canada (a “developed” country) whose quality of life is based on the exploitation and deliberate dehumanization of many others. These include low-income workers, temporary migrant workers, land- and forest-based communities across the world subjected to Canadian extractive enterprises, and Indigenous Nations whose territory and knowledges have been subjected to brutal erasure.
We both have careers in the NGO and academic sector, which makes us part of the creative and professional managerial class. One of us (Vijay) is a consultant for an environmental NGO that reports on global environmental and climate policy—thus, joining the circuit of who we term “green administrators”—those who whose labor is employed to advance the machinery of status-quo “sustainable development.” We both reside in “hip” parts of Montreal, bike to work, and travel quite a bit. In short, we are the sustainability class.
By recognizing ourselves as part of the sustainability class we want to encourage people to be more vulnerable about how their class, assets, and income put them at the forefront of climate and ecological breakdown, irrespective of the various ways they may virtue signal their consumption choices. By owning up to class privilege and building bridges across class, we can be less alienated and mobilize our resources in ways that strengthen the fight for a liveable planet. We don’t need to get stuck in either buying our way to redemption or renouncing the contributions we can make ourselves—but we do need to step outside of our class position to build coalitions and support networks.
There seems to be a lot of greenwashing when it comes to information on the topic of sustainability, climate change and potential solutions—how did you decide which sources to trust?
A simple answer is that we are suspicious about anyone trying to sell us something—whether that is a product, a service, or even an idea. These are inherently exclusive: If being part of the solution means buying into it, then what about all those people who can’t afford to? We look for climate change strategies that don’t divide ordinary people—whether these are workers or neighbors. We are wary of strategies that require purchasing power, blind faith in technological innovation, or virtue signaling to performatively show something off to others as a way to separate an in-crowd from an outsider. We are more inclined to trust strategies that begin with relationships between people and the land, historical and contemporary, that build solidarity across all kinds of difference. This, we argue, is fundamental to what acting ecologically really means.
We also based our analysis on the latest climate science and research in the environmental and social impacts of the global political economy. We looked for research that serves the interests of the people rather than corporate and state donors, who have specific commercial interests—such as those peddling false green solutions or industry lobby groups.
Can you talk a bit about the creative investigative research that you did for the book?
To write this book, we were engaging in a few different kinds of investigative and creative research. First, we were constantly tracking and analyzing the latest findings from climate change and ecological science, news articles on green and sustainability projects around the world, and investigative journalism by others on these projects that often showed they were nothing but shams. We would do some deep digging into some projects, their finances, funders, and proponents—for example NEOM in Saudi Arabia, luxury green resorts, carbon offsetting projects, and so on.
At the same time, our process was really aesthetic and visual. We were always sharing photos and images that captured the aesthetics of the sustainability class. Whenever we saw it in a restaurant, airport, conference center, when we saw an advertisement or product, we would take a photo of that and share it with each other. It was a lot of laughs. We tried to distill that vibe into the cover of the book, which we felt summarized the whole experience.
Then, we did a lot of empirical, on-the-ground field work, in places like Los Angeles, Auroville (India), and in Montreal. These involved interviews and extended adventures, often hilarious as well, as we would provide live commentary on the ridiculousness of what we were experiencing. Then we also spoke to informants who gave us firsthand knowledge of places like Ecopark in Vietnam, or the Stop Cop City mobilization in Atlanta, Georgia.
The book does a great job of striking a balance between empathy and cold truths. How did you find a narrative voice that would keep the reader engaged?
We did not want to compromise on the sharpness of the message, while also recognizing that we are also part of the very problem we are challenging as members of the sustainability class ourselves. One key tool for that was humor. We painted a picture of the sustainability class lifestyle that is deep down absurd, but also, we think, very recognizable. We tried to balance being snarky and giving people the benefit of the doubt, knowing that most people are well-meaning and honestly trying to change things for the better. We know we are responsible for it too, sitting with our lattes in a café with hanging plants writing the book, so it is easier to be empathetic to our readers.
In short, our voice tried to connect with the reader with humor, questioning, and curiosity—rather than authoritarian knowing, or scathing critique. While we did not let up on holding the sustainability class accountable, we also didn’t see the point of berating them for their “mistakes” either. We need to call each other in to do things differently.
Do you think this book will be a wake-up call for people or more likely to shine a light on what they already know but haven’t figured out how to act on?
We hope the present moment is a wake-up call to readers, who we hope to shift away from elitist or exclusive solutions. We want to help people realize that the strategies of the sustainability class are not only unsuccessful, but that they are actually making things worse. With Trump 2.0 and a crackdown on dissent, as big tech billionaires attempt to authoritatively push their “solutions” onto people, we hope to see more stepping out of their comfort zone—and most importantly outside their class privilege—and working towards building solidarity.
It would be great to see this book contribute to shaking up liberal and progressive green consumerism and technology savior fantasies and instead into joining collective struggles for justice. The obsessions with proximity to wilderness and green lifestyles and innovation only make the rich richer, or create exclusive forms of purification that ultimately alienate us.
Combating this false performance of ecology means building solidarity—relationships with real people. It means joining existing grassroots efforts to support tenants, taking over municipal governments to divest from fossil fuels and stop the funding of a surveillance and police state, and building public and affordable basic services (housing, energy, food, and transport) within antiwar internationalism. We want to see readers understanding ecology as being about taking essential public services out of the hands of billionaires and into the hands of the workers, farmers, and communities around the world.
Did it feel daunting to present ecological solutions to save the planet? How do we get people interested in reading books like this and taking action across the political divide?
To paraphrase the late anthropologist David Graeber, this economic system is an ideological and cultural creation that can just as easily be undone as it was created. Ecological solutions are always possible. There is no “good” or “bad” ecology, only an ecology that we can help foster and set in motion. Coming up with ecological solutions doesn’t have to be daunting. It is in theory quite simple. We need to build up the social movements and break down the social fragmentations that prevent life from thriving, and exploit those who take care of it.
We used humor as a strategy for ourselves, too. Humor is a way to process the absurdity of the present. We hope that it is contagious. We played with the aspect of vibes around the book cover to hopefully draw in readers to a world beyond pervasive self-branding—a world where real connection between each other and our world might still exist. We hope to build off frustrations around empty liberal speak, vapid commercialization of aesthetics and vibes, to dig deeper at the real questions. But we also want people to mobilize to avoid a dark future of tech surveillance, authoritarian fascists, and a green apartheid that throws a good chunk of humanity in harm’s way in the face of ecological collapse.
Meeting people where they are, speaking to the actual concerns of working people, and stepping outside of social media bubbles, content creators, Silicon Valley types, and elite wellness rhetoric will allow a different, much more consistent and relevant, set of ecological solutions to emerge. Bringing class into the picture is a crucial way to get from here to there.
Were there topics that felt too challenging to incorporate into the book?
We did not talk about the importance of gendered labor and caretaking enough. We didn’t want the book to be about everything—and while we touched on anti-imperialism as key to tackling unequal ecological exchange, there were many geopolitical aspects that we did not touch on. These, we felt, would take our readers beyond the core messages around classist consumption and PIE-in-the-sky solutions that green administrators and ecomodernists keep throwing at us.
We also couldn’t offer political strategy, blueprints, policies, or advice to political parties. We tried to keep to the solutions to what people can do in their neighborhood. Workplace organizing, and the role of organized labor, is a whole other part of the picture, which we didn’t discuss enough. Including these would warrant a book on their own. But there are already many books out there about these topics, we listed some in the afterword.
Which writers or books would you count among your influences in this genre?
There are quite a few books and authors that inspired us to think about ecology, ranging from the late urban historian and political writer Mike Davis to anthropologists Arturo Escobar and David Graeber, Indigenous writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer and Kyle Powys Whyte, and Indian ecologist and historian Ramachandra Guha.
Can you say what you’re working on now?
Both of us just got new jobs in the university-NGO complex, so we’re quite busy settling in to being full-time green administrators. Vijay has been involved in Palestine solidarity organizing and teaching classes about the solidarity economy. Aaron is working on a project that shows the power of the commons in an era of climate disruption and declining growth, with our friend and collaborator Neal Rockwell. He is also constantly trying to carve out time to work on his science fiction, which seems increasingly futile as reality becomes stranger than fiction.
Black history is a testament to resilience and the relentless pursuit of justice. As we honor Black History Month, we’re highlighting an essential reading list of new titles exploring the struggles, triumphs, and enduring impact of the Black community throughout history.
From activists and scholars to storytellers and visionaries, these works illuminate the deep roots of systemic inequality while offering powerful blueprints for change. Whether you’re an educator, student, or lifelong learner, these books provide vital perspectives on the past, present, and future of racial justice.
In the powerful, myth-shattering book King of the North, award-winning and New York Times bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King’s time outside of the South was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice. In this bold retelling, King emerges as a figure who not only led a revolutionary movement, but engaged in nationwide struggles to fight against racism, poverty, and war alongside his intellectual and political guide, Coretta Scott King. By reshaping our understanding of his work, King of the North connects his legacy to today’s fight for racial justice.
A riveting account of activism, urban reimagination, and political transformation, When the Smoke Cleared tells the story of the Washingtonians who seized the moment to rebuild a more just society, one that would protect and foster Black political and economic power. Kyla Sommers’s revealing and deeply researched narrative is ultimately a tale of blowback, as the Nixon administration and its allies in Congress thwarted the ambitions of DC’s reformers, opposing civil rights reforms and self-governance.
Click here to read an excerpt from When the Smoke Cleared by Kyla Sommers published by the History News Network.
In a stunning historical detective story, A Plausible Man recounts the remarkable story of the man behind the book that helped spark the Civil War. Susanna Ashton combs obscure records for evidence of Jackson’s remarkable flight from slavery to freedom, his quest to liberate his enslaved family, and his emergence as an international advocate for abolition.
Read an excerpt from A Plausible Man by Susanna Ashton in Literary Hub.
Prizewinning historian Jeff Forret uncovers one of the earliest instances of reparations in America—ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly, paid to slaveholders, not former slaves. The Price They Paid challenges our understanding of historical justice and its lingering consequences today. Read an excerpt from The Price They Paid below.
The winner of the James A. Beard Foundation Book Award and Harriet Tubman Prize, Jori Lewis weaves a gripping history of how European demand for peanut oil ensured that slavery in Africa would persist well into the twentieth century, long after the European powers had officially banned it in the territories they controlled. Slaves for Peanuts is a revelatory exploration of how global markets fueled human bondage, challenging common assumptions about imperialism and freedom. Read an outtake from Jori Lewis’s Slaves for Peanuts published in Guernica.
With wit and razor-sharp legal insight, Elie Mystal exposes ten of the worst laws shaping American life—from gun manufacturer immunity to attacks on reproductive rights. Bad Law is both a scathing critique and a hopeful call to rewrite the rules for a just society.
In this crucially timely book, Unreasonable offers a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law—and the U.S. Constitution—play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people. Celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct—more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process.
Watch a discussion of Unreasonable with author Devon Carbado in conversation with Paul Butler on C-SPAN’s Book TV.
Legal scholar Patricia J. Williams unravels the complex ties between race, science, and ownership in The Miracle of the Black Leg. With sharp legal insight, she exposes how laws have commodified human life—governing everything from body parts to DNA—while marginalizing nonconformity and minority identities. Provocative and brilliant, this book challenges who really controls our bodies and identities in a world of legal and ethical entanglements. Read an excerpt from The Miracle of the Black Leg below.
From Harriet Tubman to Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Blackbirds Singing showcases two centuries of powerful speeches by Black women. Social justice activist and scholar Janet Dewart Bell curates a stirring collection of voices that have shaped movements for justice, leadership, and liberation. Read an excerpt from Blackbirds Singing below.
As a no-nonsense, political critique, How We Win the Civil War shows us how to rid our politics of white supremacy, once and for all. Steve Phillips delivers razor-sharp prescriptions for the new political season, including specific guidance for politicians, policymakers, and ordinary citizens alike.
Read an excerpt from How We Win the Civil War in The Guardian.
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