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Recommended reading list for new students

We often get asked what our academics recommend offer-holders and applicants to read before they start at university. Here’s our recommended list.

Published:

Mile End Library

You might be finding yourself with a little time to dive into a good book, with some downtime at home.

We polled our academic staff to get their recommended reads for Geography, Environmental Science and Global Development students - as well as for alumni and friends of the School. The intention was to provide a list of books that they have found tell important stories about our societies and planet.

This selection below is not a module or programme reading list – if you’re an incoming student you’ll be provided with these when you start your studies – but they are examples of books we recommend. Browse through the recommendations and try to pick one or two that interest you – they should be accessible in a local library or via any good bookshop.

Human Geography and Global Development

  • People vs Tech: How the Internet is Killing Democracy (and How We Can Save It) by Jamie Bartlett
  • Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands by Hazel Carby
  • One Midsummer's Day: Science and the Imagination by Mark Cocker
  • Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
  • The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu by Mike Davis
  • Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England's Colonial Connections by Corinne Fowler
  • Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life on the Body in an Unjust Society by Arline Geronimus
  • The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
  • Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman
  • The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us by Nick Hayes
  • Life is Not Useful by Ailton Krenak
  • Capitalism, a Ghost Story by Arundhati Roy
  • Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
  • I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain by Anita Sethi
  • The Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe

Physical Geography and Environmental Science

  • Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis by Alice Bell
  • There is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years by Mike Berners-Lee
  • A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet by Jo Handelsman
  • Cornerstones: Wild Forces That Can Change Our World by Benedict Macdonald
  • The New Climate Wars: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet by Michael Mann
  • Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
  • Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World by Laurence Smith
  • Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree
  • Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made by Gaia Vince
  • The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells

Ideas and Thinking

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
  • Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking by Matthew Syed

 

 

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