FIT Common Read: All We Can Save

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. "A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?"--The New York Times   NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.   All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.   Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, this collection is a celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. With essays and poems by: Emily Atkin * Xiye Bastida * Ellen Bass * Colette Pichon Battle * Jainey K. Bavishi * Janine Benyus * adrienne maree brown * Régine Clément * Abigail Dillen * Camille T. Dungy * Rhiana Gunn-Wright * Joy Harjo * Katharine Hayhoe * Mary Annaïse Heglar * Jane Hirshfield * Mary Anne Hitt * Ailish Hopper * Tara Houska, Zhaabowekwe * Emily N. Johnston * Joan Naviyuk Kane * Naomi Klein * Kate Knuth * Ada Limón * Louise Maher-Johnson * Kate Marvel * Gina McCarthy * Anne Haven McDonnell * Sarah Miller * Sherri Mitchell, Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset * Susanne C. Moser * Lynna Odel * Sharon Olds * Mary Oliver * Kate Orff * Jacqui Patterson * Leah Penniman * Catherine Pierce * Marge Piercy * Kendra Pierre-Louis * Varshini * Prakash * Janisse Ray * Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez * Favianna Rodriguez * Cameron Russell * Ash Sanders * Judith D. Schwartz * Patricia Smith * Emily Stengel * Sarah Stillman * Leah Cardamore Stokes * Amanda Sturgeon * Maggie Thomas * Heather McTeer Toney * Alexandria Villaseñor * Alice Walker * Amy Westervelt * Jane Zelikova

An ebook version is also available through the library.

Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award A groundbreaking chronicle of the birth--and death--of a pair of jeans, that exposes the fractures in our global supply chains, and our relationships to each other, ourselves, and the planet Take a look at your favorite pair of jeans. Maybe you bought them on Amazon or the Gap; maybe the tag says "Made in Bangladesh" or "Made in Sri Lanka." But do you know where they really came from, how many thousands of miles they crossed, or the number of hands who picked, spun, wove, dyed, packaged, shipped, and sold them to get to you? The fashion industry operates with radical opacity, and it's only getting worse to disguise countless environmental and labor abuses. It epitomizes the ravages inherent in the global economy, and all in the name of ensuring that we keep buying more while thinking less about its real cost. In Unraveled, entrepreneur, researcher, and advocate Maxine Bedat follows the life of an American icon--a pair of jeans--to reveal what really happens to give us our clothes. We visit a Texas cotton farm figuring out how to thrive without relying on fertilizers that poison the earth. Inside dyeing and weaving factories in China, where chemicals that are banned in the West slosh on factory floors and drain into waterways used to irrigate local family farms. Sewing floors in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are crammed with women working for illegally low wages to produce garments as efficiently as machines. Back in America, our jeans get stowed, picked, and shipped out by Amazon warehouse workers pressed to be as quick as the robots primed to replace them. Finally, those jeans we had to have get sent to landfills--or, if they've been "donated," shipped back around the world to Africa, where they're sold for pennies in secondhand markets or buried and burned in mountains of garbage. A sprawling, deeply researched, and provocative tour-de-force, Unraveled is not just the story of a pair of pants, but also the story of our global economy and our role in it. Told with piercing insight and unprecedented reporting, Unraveled challenges us to use our relationship with our jeans--and all that we wear--to reclaim our central role as citizens to refashion a society in which all people can thrive and preserve the planet for generations to come.