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NonfictionSocial ScienceEnvironment

Power Metal

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

When we bring our mobile phone to life with a tap or settle in behind the wheel of our car, few of us give much thought to the raw materials required to make these sometimes miraculous- seeming devices work. Journalist Vince Beiser has reflected deeply on that subject, and the result, Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape Our Future, is a sharp cautionary tale about the dilemmas facing humanity as we advance deeper into what he calls the Electro-Digital Age, especially as we pursue the essential transition to an energy-renewable future.

Everything comes with a cost, Beiser reminds us, even when it comes to the use of so-called critical metals like lithium, cobalt and nickel. These resources are fundamental to the massive expansion of electric cars and the clean energy sources (namely solar and wind power) that are necessary to combat climate change. What makes that truth problematic, he argues, is that the inevitable price of progress often falls most heavily on the residents of impoverished countries who bear the burden of first extracting these materials and later disposing of the batteries and printed circuit boards, for example, in which they’re used.

Beiser’s journey to this insight takes him from the streets of his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, where he tracks an “urban miner” digging through dumpsters for salvageable products like copper wiring, to a lithium mining operation in Chile’s Atacama desert, to a garbage dump in Lagos, Nigeria, where “e-waste scrappers” work in hazardous conditions to recycle electronic products. Power Metal is a concise, but thoroughly researched, work crammed with eye-popping statistics—among them the fact that 75 pounds of ore must be mined to build one four-and-a-half ounce iPhone. It investigates highly touted technologies like sea mining, whose promised benefits may conceal massive environmental risks. 

In the final section of his book, Beiser offers some prescriptions to reduce the planet’s insatiable demand for resources that go beyond costly and energy-intensive recycling, including broadening the scope of right to repair laws, making urban spaces more friendly to bicyclists and deeply questioning our infatuation with the automobile. Whatever one thinks of the practicality of some of his proposals, Beiser has performed a vital service by alerting both policymakers and ordinary citizens to some of the critical choices facing us. 

Power Metal sounds the alarm on the environmental and social consequences of electronic and digital energy—and how the ways we are combating climate change come at a cost.
NonfictionSocial ScienceEnvironment

Valley So Low

Review by Stephen Elliott

The crusading savant with messy hair and scattered papers is a common protagonist in legal thrillers. The archetype—played by Mark Ruffalo or Julia Roberts or Matt Damon in films over the years—comes to life in attorney Jim Scott, the center of gravity in Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe. Here, Tennessee-based journalist Jared Sullivan chronicles a yearslong battle in the wake of one of America’s worst environmental disasters. 

In December 2008, a dike ruptured at a power plant in East Tennessee, deluging the surrounding rivers and landscape with more than 1 billion gallons of coal waste. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned electric utility corporation, pledged to clean up its mess, and hired engineering conglomerate Jacobs Engineering to oversee the work. 

It didn’t take long before the cleanup workers started falling ill. Though they’d been told repeatedly the site was safe and the air was clean, the workers began to suspect the coal ash they were cleaning up was to blame for their new ailments and faltering health. They alleged that Jacobs was preventing them from wearing protective gear and tampering with air quality sensor data in an effort to avoid further public scrutiny and speed the lucrative project along. 

Sullivan tells the story of the workers, the TVA and Jacobs officials in charge and, centrally, Scott and his collaborators, who took on the workers’ case in an effort to extract justice from the tragic disaster. The author paints vivid portraits of key characters; love lives and family dramas help render the victims in color, making their plight all the more upsetting. 

Horrifying details and anecdotes pile up as the story unfolds, and it’s easy to understand how righteous anger could fuel a lengthy legal quest with no promise of financial reward. Propulsive and written with flair, Valley So Low is a valuable addition to the pantheon of legal thrillers. 

Jared Sullivan’s Valley So Low chronicles an environmental disaster in Tennessee with the flair of a propulsive legal thriller.
NonfictionScienceEnvironment

Trash Talk

Review by Kelly Blewett

Have you ever wondered what happens to your trash? Or who lives next to landfills? Or why recycling is so complicated? If you struggle to wrap your mind around humankind’s relation to waste, check out Trash Talk: An Eye-Opening Exploration of Our Planet’s Dirtiest Problem by science writer and illustrator Iris Gottlieb.

Gottlieb offers a no-nonsense explanation of the global trash production system that is both timely, informative and digestible. Writing that their goal is not to change anyone’s behavior, but rather to offer more context about the trash crisis itself, Gottlieb avoids berating us for our stagnant composters and single-use floss picks. Instead, they illuminate the complexities of electronic and digital waste, the debate over whether to incinerate or use landfills, the reason that not all paper can be recycled and much more. Readers learn about sustainability interventions in construction, electronics and plastics. The book is rife with discoveries; a particularly shudder-inducing one is of fatbergs, “huge masses” of nonbiodegradable material, fats, oils and grease “that harden into bus-sized, concrete-like chunks” in our sewer systems.

Yet Trash Talk can also be lighthearted, thanks in part to Gottlieb’s whimsical line drawings that illustrate everything from trash barges to scrounging raccoons to subway rats. Quick asides called “Trashy Tidbits” highlight a range of facts and anecdotes, like how Disney World employs underground vacuum tubes to send its trash behind Space Mountain, where it is compacted. Another tidbit tells how a small community on Lake Huron ceremoniously buried 29,188 frozen mushroom pizzas deemed unsafe by the FDA; “Pizza was served at the funeral,” Gottlieb notes. These asides balance out the growing sense of dread readers may feel while confronting how waste management is contributing to global warming.

Like water to a goldfish, our trash crisis is simultaneously omnipresent and invisible. Gottlieb unpacks the way our environments are built and argues persuasively that our society needs major interventions to move beyond linear thinking regarding the use of resources. We also need to reckon with the fact that the poorest and most vulnerable among us are the ones most exposed to danger because of racism and other long-standing social injustices. Gottlieb’s candor and willingness to call out these painful truths make Trash Talk a book readers will remember and share.

 

Science writer Iris Gottlieb uncovers the crisis of our waste management systems in their timely, playfully illustrated Trash Talk.
NonfictionSocial ScienceEnvironment

The Nature of Our Cities

Review by mónica teresa ortiz

Soil sensors prevent trees from dying in a college town in the Netherlands. A Boston arborist digitally tracks the city’s urban forest, helping efforts to maintain and preserve the canopy. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur develops an app to alert residents of wildfires. In The Nature of Our Cities: Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet, author and ecological engineer Nadina Galle sprints from one environmental challenge to the next, studying—and sometimes offering—possible ways to repair urban ecosystems in a time of urgent climate disaster. 

As Galle moves from region to region, the book finds its emotional center through the different people she works with. One of the most instrumental connections she makes is with Richard Louv, the 73-year-old bestselling author of Last Child in the Woods and an advocate for fostering relationships between children and nature. On a hike outside San Diego, Louv shares his belief that technology should be used “to restore our equilibrium with nature,” noting that “The right tech gets us outside, enriching our experience. The wrong tech locks us into a screen.” The conversation prompts Galle to study kid-friendly apps that draw people out of their homes, like Pokémon GO and iNaturalist, while also noting that “nature’s value should not be reduced to what it does for us.” 

The Nature of Our Cities is an approachable and easily digestible read for anyone interested in learning more about the convergence of technology in urban landscapes from a social science perspective. However, the optimistic, accessible tone means that the book skates over directly naming systems like capitalism or colonialism as the causes of vulnerability in our most critical infrastructures. Instead, Galle tends to stick to the small picture, calling out “planners and municipal leaders who subscribed to an ill-fated ambition to sever our connection with the ecosystems around us.” 

Galle visits lands recovering from disaster, such as Paradise, California, an area left scorched by wildfires. In this chapter, the author makes a rare nod to the land management skills of Indigenous people, acknowledging the “bounty of plant and animal life” that European and American settlers encountered in the Pacific Northwest. “They believed it to be a perfect representation of an unspoiled, permanent landscape rather than a delicate equilibrium in everlasting flux.” More research into Indigenous land management and technology would have deepened the narrative and provided a less Eurocentric lens. 

Galle, who grew up in a once heavily forested part of southern Ontario, is a naturalist in the way of Ralph Waldo Emerson, writing, “The longer I stay in the woods, the more I change.” The Nature of Our Cities shows her deep enthusiasm for finding ways that technology can support ecosystems in crisis, and will be of use to those interested in such innovations. 

An ecological engineer travels the world to learn how technology can address urban eco-crises in the approachable The Nature of Our Cities.
NonfictionSelf-HelpEnvironment

Lessons From the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Like so many of us, poet and Brown University professor Kate Schapira is deeply worried about the future of our planet. Rather than fret alone, in 2014 she set up her Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth (inspired by “Peanuts” character Lucy van Pelt) in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, as a means of communication and commiseration.

Now, she’s distilled what she heard, discussed, felt and learned into her debut book, Lessons From the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth: How to Live With Care and Purpose in an Endangered World. Schapira, who writes in a voice resonant with empathy, encouragement and fierce determination, recommends the book be read “in order and together” because “the progression of stories, questions, and practices is designed to unwind tightly tangled grief, frustration, exhaustion, and inertia . . . into a followable path of courage, capability, and strength.”

Such a path was far from clear when her booth debuted in 2014: “No one I knew seemed to want to discuss it at all,” she writes, “and that made me feel frantic and alone.” But as her network of climate-conscious compatriots grew, Schapira developed a process to help readers “transform what [they] feel, with others, into connection and action,” which this book details across eight chapters rife with information and analysis.

Schapira also takes on capitalism and white supremacy, which she believes create and perpetuate climate change. For example, she describes so-called sacrifice zones, “places where ecology, including human well-being, is sacrificed for power and profit,” noting residents “are usually people culturally devalued by their city or nation.” And she cites the work of activists she encountered, like Mark, who walked a cross-continent barefoot pilgrimage to Brooklyn-based BK ROT, a compost-hauling service whose hiring practices ensure “some of the people hit hardest by capitalism and white supremacy feed themselves, their families, and the soil.”

Ultimately, Schapira writes, her book is “not the last word on anything—or the first word either,” but it’s certainly a valuable reading experience for those seeking shared solace as well as motivation for positive, productive communal action. An extensive contributors and resources section, as well as a glossary, nicely bolster Schapira’s smart, heartfelt and inspirational efforts.

Kate Schapira offers a guide to transforming climate angst into collective action in her inspiring Lessons From the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesEnvironment

Sown in the Stars

Review by Susannah Felts

For centuries, farmers have been consulting celestial cycles, such as the zodiac and the phases of the moon, to time their planting, with a number of calendars and almanacs printed every year to help them do just that. There’s scant scientific research on this type of zodiac-based cultivation, but as associate professor of agriculture and natural resources Sarah L. Hall muses in Sown in the Stars, “It does seem (even to a scientist like me) that when a practice continues over a long period of time, there might just be something to it.”

Hall interviewed a large number of Kentuckians who follow the folk tradition of planting by the signs (I love how she refers to them as “garden artists”), and their stories shape the heart of this beautifully designed book. Hall gives readers an overview of astrology and astronomy, which inform this method of farming, and she even shares the results of her own season of planting by the signs. Whether you wish to give it a go yourself or are simply curious about traditional practices, this book is a valuable cultural document, full of experience and wisdom typically passed from one generation to the next by women.

Sown in the Stars is a valuable cultural document, full of experience and wisdom from farmers who consult celestial cycles and the zodiac signs to time their planting.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesEnvironment

The Language of Trees

Review by Susannah Felts

On her website, Irish artist Katie Holten asks, “What is the language we need to live right now? How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?” One of her answers is an innovative—and downloadable!—tree alphabet font: For each letter, she has drawn a corresponding tree.

This project provides the stunning visual component for The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, “a love letter to our vanishing world,” in which Holten gathers a diverse range of writing celebrating and reflecting on all things arboreal. There are recipes for acorn flour and gall ink, words from Plato and Radiohead, poems by Ada Limon and Camille Dungy, musings on cacao and catalpa trees, and so much more—all of it printed first in English and then in Holten’s tree alphabet, creating visual forests that represent the book’s words. I’ve never seen anything remotely like this work of art and was nodding along to the introduction by poet Ross Gay: “Can I tell you how batshit beautiful I find this? Can I tell you how each piece . . . each essay or poem or song becoming a forest or orchard, rattles me, flummoxes me really, with how beautiful?”

Artist Katie Holten has gathered a stunning range of writings that celebrate all things arboreal, from recipes for acorn flour to reflections on catalpa trees.
NonfictionEnvironmentAnimals

Eight Bears

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Gloria Dickie, an award-winning journalist and climate correspondent for Reuters, begins her intensive study of the eight remaining species of bears by recalling the familiar children’s story of Goldilocks. “We have entered the bears’ home without permission and selfishly laid claim to what we found there,” Dickie writes in Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future, alluding to everything humans have done to endanger these creatures.

Dickie brings readers along for the global trek she took while reporting and writing this book. Eight Bears is divided into three geographic parts, according to her subjects’ habitats: South America is home to the elusive spectacled bear in Ecuador and Peru; sloth, sun, moon and panda bears live in Asia, including India, Vietnam and China; and in North America, readers meet the American black and brown bears (United States) and the polar bear (Canada).

There is a lot to learn here about the mythic panda, the shy spectacled bear, the aggressive sloth bear, the controversial grizzly, the potentially doomed polar bear and others, and Dickie shows just how vulnerable they all are. Climate change is everywhere, threatening animals and humans with droughts, deforestation, warming seas and withering food sources. Human greed, corruption and exploitation make things worse; the captors of sloth “dancing bears” in India and the extractors of bear bile in Vietnam, for example, have earned their infamy. In the U.S., the pros and cons of continuing to protect grizzlies while ranchers and farmers deal with the dire consequences of their predation are up for debate. In other parts of the world, different species are being forced to share dwindling food sources, such as the spectacled bear and the puma as lowlands warm in the Andes. Six of these eight bear species are on the verge of extinction, and in addition to outlining their peril, Dickie also speaks with several of the activists and scientists who are working to secure a better future for them.

Our relationship with bears has been complicated but tender, Dickie notes. Remember the whimsical Paddington Bear, the beloved Berenstain Bears, the cute stuffed teddy bear in a baby’s crib? And the panda bear, so idolized that it is given as a political gift to China’s favored friends? Perhaps it is just such a history that can inspire more work to save them from extinction.

Gloria Dickie’s study of the eight remaining species of bears is laced with climate change warnings as she explores all the ways humans both love and endanger these creatures.
NonfictionNatureEnvironmentAnimals

Kings of Their Own Ocean

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Part memoir, part scientific exploration, part biography, Karen Pinchin’s cautionary and riveting Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our Seas illuminates the plight of the Atlantic bluefin tuna and the fishermen and scientists who’ve spent their lives studying, tagging and working to save the species.

Although we often marvel over tales of great white sharks and other predators of the sea, most people only think of bluefin tuna when they order sushi, seldom considering its beauty and power beyond the dinner plate. Pinchin opens with a paean to this apex predator of the oceans: “To stand beside a just-landed giant bluefin, still slick from salt water, feels akin to standing beside a natural marvel like Niagara Falls or an erupting volcano. There’s beauty, but also danger.” The book follows one bluefin, dubbed Amelia (after Amelia Earhart) from the cold waters of the Atlantic, where she was first tagged in 2004, to the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, where she was killed in 2018. In between this coverage, Pinchin takes us through the history of commercial fishing for bluefin, as well as the politics and science that have frequently collided in attempts to preserve the tuna from extinction. 

Early in his career as a boat captain, fisherman Al Anderson recognized the precipitous decline of the bluefin population and soon began chartering trips off Rhode Island where his customers catch, tag and release tuna—including Amelia. In 1990, Anderson wrote The Atlantic Bluefin Tuna: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, an oral history peppered with his own memories of fishing, and To Catch a Tuna, a “how-to guide for aspiring tuna fishermen.” We also meet Molly Lutcavage, whose research was the first of its kind to gather and analyze data on bluefin, and Carl Safina, the author of Song for the Blue Ocean, who proposed that the bluefin be listed as endangered. 

While Pinchin avers that “we are collectively only ever a few terrible choices from wiping out any ocean species,” her conclusion is optimistic: “The future of Atlantic bluefin tuna has hinged on a series of butterfly-wing events. . . . Those moments all mattered, and those moments are still being made.” Kings of Their Own Ocean enthralls, instructs and is a must-read for readers concerned about the future of our oceans and the creatures within them.

The enthralling Kings of Their Own Ocean tells the story of an overlooked predator, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, urging readers to consider its power and beauty beyond the dinner plate.
NonfictionLifestylesEnvironment

Sea Change

Review by Susannah Felts

The Earth’s island inhabitants live on the front lines of climate change. What might amount to distressing media coverage for inland and continental dwellers is, for these populations, a frightening everyday reality—despite the fact that they are, on balance, among the least responsible for increasingly harrowing conditions. In Sea Change, Christina Gerhardt does the important work of chronicling the metamorphosis and loss of island landmass as sea levels rise and severe weather patterns become more frequent and erratic. Combining scientific exploration with essays, poetry and other works by Indigenous artists, this book is a profound, unflinching document of places vanishing before our eyes. But Sea Change also keeps hope alive as it “activates imaginings of possible futures.” It’s sobering enough to make readers consider the increasing obsolescence of any atlas we may have on our shelves, but it also calls us to listen to the voices of the peoples whose lives, languages and histories hang in the balance.

Combining scientific exploration with essays, poetry and other works by indigenous artists, Sea Change is a profound, unflinching document of places vanishing before our eyes.
NonfictionNatureMemoirEnvironment

The Quickening

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Creative nonfiction writer Elizabeth Rush had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when she was invited to join a 57-person voyage to the Thwaites Glacier. That piece of Antarctica had never been seen by humans, yet scientists expected that data from its fast-shifting ice would inform our understanding of a changing climate. Aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, Rush could once again deploy her reporting and narrative prowess to deepen her and readers’ familiarity with the world they call home, as she did when exploring how rising sea levels would affect the United States’ coast in her previous Pulitzer finalist book, Rising.

But to do so, Rush would have to delay her attempts to conceive a child.

These competing desires propel The Quickening: Creating and Community at the Ends of the Earth, a distinctive addition to the Antarctic canon. Before setting out on the Palmer, Rush turned her attention to existing literature about Antarctica—which she finds is largely “fluff or end-of-the-world stuff.” Women rarely appear in these accounts, nor do the crews who navigate the treacherous seas and make research possible through their expertise.

Rush is at ease shifting between various objects of fascination, and she immerses herself in her shipmates’ work at every opportunity. Although she’s on board as a writer, not a scientist, Rush helps teams gather and process samples of mud and ice containing clues to Thwaites’ past and the Earth’s future.

But even the study of climate change seems impossible to isolate from forces that exacerbate it. During an excursion off the Palmer, Rush notes, “Almost every aspect of our mission is threaded through with petrochemicals,” from the soles of the group’s shoes to Rush’s voice recorder to the careers of many shipmates’ parents.

Aboard the Palmer, Rush grapples with her desire to give birth in a world with an increasingly fragile climate. Back home, she encounters an undergraduate student arguing against reproduction in this scenario. But in conversation with her shipmates, Rush cites a scientific article that she recently read: “Its underlying argument—that rapid transition away from fossil fuels, not fewer pregnancies, is what is needed—gives me some solace.”

Rush centers women’s voices in her exploration of motherhood and the Earth, gliding between her personal reflections, descriptions of life aboard the ship and stories of what comes after. Simultaneously lyrical and analytical, The Quickening depicts Rush’s search for meaning while rejecting easy answers.

Pulitzer finalist Elizabeth Rush combines memoir, reportage and science writing in a lyrical, women-centered addition to the Antarctic canon.
NonfictionTrue CrimeTravelNatureMusicMemoirHistoryEnvironmentBlack HistoryBiographyAmerican History

Fall 2023 preview: Most anticipated nonfiction

Feature by the editors of BookPage

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

Simon & Schuster | October 3

Throughout poet Safiya Sinclair’s childhood in Jamaica, her father was a strict Rastafarian who imposed harsh constraints on his daughters’ lives and appearances. As Sinclair read the books her mother gave her and began to find her voice as a poet, she likewise found her voice as a daughter struggling to get out from underneath her father’s thumb. In her debut memoir, Sinclair reckons with colonialism, patriarchy and obedience in expressive, melodic prose.

A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Riverhead | September 12

The celebrated novelist and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer turns to memoir for the first time in A Man of Two Faces. Viet Thanh Nguyen left Vietnam at age 4 and came to the U.S. as a refugee, but even after escaping danger in their home country, his family was separated, targeted and harmed in America. This book recounts the events of Nguyen’s life, of course, but it becomes much more than a straightforward memoir as Nguyen conjures stirring insights into memory, migration and identity.

The Sisterhood by Liza Mundy

Crown | October 17

The author of the 2017 bestseller Code Girls returns with The Sisterhood, a history of the women who have played key roles in the CIA since World War II. As spies, archivists, analysts and operatives, women have been underestimated and overlooked through the years. Liza Mundy now spins a gripping tale of how those women used those slights to their advantage as they captured state secrets and spotted threats that the men working alongside them had missed.

Being Henry by Henry Winkler

Celadon | October 31

Famously kindhearted actor Henry Winkler opens up about his life and work in Being Henry. From overcoming a difficult childhood and getting typecast as the Fonz early in his career to finding his second wind decades later in shows such as “Arrested Development” and “Barry,” Winkler peers beneath the sparkling veneer of Hollywood to tell the tender personal story behind his lifelong fame.

My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

Viking | November 7

If there is one book that truly captures the spirit of “most anticipated,” it has to be screen and stage legend Barbra Streisand’s memoir. Fans have been looking forward to reading the full saga of Streisand’s life and unparalleled career for years—and this fall, they will finally get the chance. At 1,024 pages long, this book is unlikely to skip over any of the juicy details.

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul by Tracy K. Smith

Knopf | November 7

Tracy K. Smith digs into historical archives to craft a new terminology for American life in this centuries-spanning portrait. Using the personal, documentary and spiritual, Smith considers the memory and possibilities of race, family and intimacy throughout history and into the future. By the end of this meditation, readers will have a new vocabulary and insight into the powers of their own soul.

Gator Country by Rebecca Renner

Flatiron | November 14

Gonzo journalism meets nature documentary in this fast-paced Floridian crime story. Officer Jeff Babauta goes undercover into the world of gator poaching in an attempt to bring down the intricate crime ring. As he becomes embedded in the network, meeting a zany, desperate cast of characters, Babauta’s sense of justice is challenged and he soon has to choose between sacrificing his new community and the safety of the natural world. 

The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston

Grand Central | December 5

True crime meets a crash course in archaeological history in this extravaganza of a book. When he isn’t co-writing bestselling thrillers featuring FBI Agent Pendergast, Douglas Preston has been traveling the world, visiting some of history’s most storied and remote locations. From the largest tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings to a mass grave left by an asteroid impact, Preston will take readers on a fun, insightful journey into history.

Discover all of BookPage’s most anticipated books of fall 2023.

From CIA spies to Barbra Streisand, alligator tales and more, there’s something for everyone in fall’s most anticipated nonfiction releases.
NonfictionMemoirEnvironment

Windfall

Review by Alison Hood

The word windfall conjures images of unanticipated abundance: sweet apples fallen from the tree, ripe for the taking; money unexpectedly found in a coat pocket; or a surprise inheritance of wealth. Erika Bolstad, journalist and former investigative reporter for Climatewire, offers these kinds of unexpected riches in Windfall, a personal family story wrapped in a history of mineral rights, the oil and gas industry, the hard realities for women homesteading in the early 20th century and the American myths of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.

This heartfelt, meticulously researched memoir hinges on the author’s great-grandmother Anna Josephine Sletvold, a daughter of Norwegian immigrants who set up a homestead in North Dakota in the early 1900s. In 1907, according to family lore, Anna disappeared. 

More than 100 years later, Bolstad’s mother received a surprise $2,400 check from an oil company—a payment for leasing the mineral rights beneath the surface of the lands where Anna’s homestead once was, at the edge of North Dakota’s profitable Bakken oil fields. She was jubilant. “We could be rich” had been whispered throughout their family history, starting in the early 1950s when North Dakota began its quest for oil, and when Bolstad’s grandparents entered into a lease agreement for royalties on mineral rights.

A short time later, Bolstad’s mother died, leaving behind a mystery that sparked the author’s investigative bent: What exactly had happened to Anna? And was the possibility of riches from oil-related wealth a reality or a chimera? Bolstad writes that this mystery “was my inheritance, my windfall. My story to tell.”

Into the personal fabric of this memoir, in which Bolstad recounts her search for how Anna was “lost,” the author weaves a robust history of the Homestead Act; the rise and fall of the North Dakota oil fields; the often nefarious practices companies employed to make huge profits at the expense of lands, workers and the public; and the political, economic and environmental implications of America’s never-ending quest for energy—and wealth.

With so much urgent concern over climate change and the impacts—environmental, political, economic and social—we humans have on our planet, Windfall is a timely, insightful and important read.

Erika Bolstad’s heartfelt memoir is also a robust discussion of the environmental implications of America’s never-ending quest for energy—and wealth.

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