With the holiday travel season ramping up, a good book is a must-have for airport delays or to give as the perfect gift.

Journalists from Bloomberg Green picked seven climate and environmental books they loved despite their weighty content. A few were positively uplifting. Here are our recommendations.

Fiction

“What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan

It’s 2119, decades after the Derangement (cascading climate catastrophes), the Inundation (a global tsunami triggered by a Russian nuclear bomb) and artificial intelligence-launched wars have halved the world’s population. The U.S. is no more and the U.K. is an impoverished archipelago of tiny islands where scholar Tom Metcalfe embarks on an obsessive quest to find the only copy of a renowned 21st century poem that was never published.

The famous author of the ode to now-vanished English landscapes recited it once at a dinner party in 2014 as a gift to his wife, but its words remain lost to time. Metcalfe believes access to the previously hidden digital lives of the poet and his circle will lead him to the manuscript. He knows where to start his search: Thanks to Nigeria — the 22nd century’s superpower — the historical internet has been decrypted and archived, including every personal email, text, photo and video.

The truth, though, lies elsewhere. It’s a richly told tale of our deranged present — and where it may lead without course correction. — Todd Woody

“Greenwood” by Michael Christie

This likewise dystopian novel begins in 2038 with Jacinda Greenwood, a dendrologist turned tour guide for the ultra-wealthy, working in one of the world’s last remaining forests. But the novel zig-zags back to 1934 and the beginnings of a timber empire that divided her family for generations.

For more than a century, the Greenwoods’ lives and fates were entwined with the trees they fought to exploit or protect. The novel explores themes of ancestral sin and atonement against the backdrop of the forests, which stand as silent witnesses to human crimes enacted on a global scale. — Danielle Bochove

“Barkskins” by Annie Proulx

Another multigenerational saga, spanning more than three centuries and 700 pages, this 2016 novel by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author tracks the deforestation of the New World over 300 years, beginning in the 17th century.

Following the descendants of two immigrants to what will become modern-day Quebec, the story takes the reader on a global voyage, crisscrossing North America, visiting the Amsterdam coffee houses that served as hubs for the Dutch mercantile empire and following new trade routes from China to New Zealand. Along the way, it chronicles the exploitation of the forests, the impact on Indigenous communities and the lasting legacy of colonialism.

With a vast cast of characters, the novel is at times unwieldy. But the staggering descriptions of Old World forests and the incredible human effort required to destroy them linger long after the saga concludes. —Danielle Bochove

Nonfiction

“The Joyful Environmentalist: How to Practise Without Preaching” by Isabel Losada

It is hard for a committed environmentalist to feel cheerful these days. But Isabel Losada’s book encourages readers to undertake a seemingly impossible mission: finding delight in navigating the absurd situations that committed environmentalists inevitably face, rather than succumbing to frustration.

Those delights can be as simple as looking up eco-friendly homemade shampoo formulas on Instagram or crushing a bucket of berries for seed collection to help restore native plants.

The book itself is an enjoyable read. With vivid details and a dose of British humor, Losada relays her failed attempt to have lunch at a Whole Foods store without using its disposable plastic cutlery. (The solution? Bring your own metal fork.) To be sure, some advice in her book isn’t realistic for everyone. But there are plenty of practical tips, such as deleting old and unwanted emails to help reduce the energy usage of data centers that store them. This book is an important reminder that you can protect the environment joyfully.
— Coco Liu

“Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future” by Dan Wang

China’s President Xi Jinping is a trained engineer, and so are many members of the country’s top leadership. Dan Wang writes about how that training shows up in the country’s relentless push to build, build and build. That includes a clean tech industry that leads the world in almost every conceivable category, though Wang explores other domains as well.

Born in China, Wang grew up in Canada and studied in the U.S. before going back to live in his native country from 2017 to 2023. That background helps his analysis land with more gravity in 2025, as the U.S. and China face off in a battle of fossil fuels versus clean tech. — Akshat Rathi

“Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures” by Merlin Sheldrake

A JP Morgan banker might seem an unlikely character in a book about fungi. But R. Gordon Wasson, who popularized the main compound found in “magic mushrooms” with a 1957 article in Life magazine, is only one of the delightful surprises in Merlin Sheldrake’s offbeat book. The author’s dedication to telling the tale of fungi includes literally getting his hands dirty, unearthing complex underground fungal networks, and engaging in self-experimentation by participating in a scientific study of the effects of LSD on the brain. The result is a book that reveals the complexity and interdependency of life on Earth, and the role we play in it.

“We humans became as clever as we are, so the argument goes, because we were entangled within a demanding flurry of interaction,” Sheldrake writes. Fungi, a lifeform that depends on its interrelatedness with everything else, might have more in common with us than we realize. — Olivia Rudgard

“Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation” by Dan Fagin

When chemical manufacturer Ciba arrived in Toms River, N.J., in 1952, the company’s new plant seemed like the economic engine the sleepy coastal community dependent on fishing and tourism had always needed. But the plant soon began quietly dumping millions of gallons of chemical-laced waste into the town’s eponymous river and surrounding woods. That started a legacy of toxic pollution that left families asking whether the waste was the cause of unusually high rates of childhood cancer in the area.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece of environmental journalism reads like a thriller, albeit with devastating real-world fallout. It also shows how companies can reinvent themselves: I was startled to learn that Ciba, later known as Ciba-Geigy, merged with another company in 1996 to become the pharmaceutical company Novartis. At a time when there’s been a push to relocate manufacturing from abroad back to the U.S., this is a worthy examination of the hidden costs that can accompany industrial growth. — Emma Court

Bochove, Woody, Liu, Court, Rudgard and Rathi write for Bloomberg.

In the 1940s and ’50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence’s, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.

His game was electric. “Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him,” someone identified only as “the shirt king” told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive.

The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet’s character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman.

Nicknamed “The Needle” for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens.

Like Chalamet’s Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it “involved anatomy and chemistry and physics.”

One of the game’s “bad boys”

Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. “His personality made him legendary,” said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. “The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style … Marty was a sharp dresser, man.”

He was also one of the game’s “bad boys,” just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn’t show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials capitulated — but later fined the players $200 and suspended them “indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis” worldwide for breaking the sport’s “courtesy code.”

Marty Reisman demonstrates an under-the-leg trick shot in 1955.

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Ping pong offered quick cash — and an outlet 

Reisman grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His dad was a taxi driver and serious gambler. “It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine,” Reisman wrote. His parents split when he was 10. His mother, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, worked as a waitress and then in a garment factory. When he was 14, Marty went to live with his father at the Broadway Central Hotel.

Hustling was “just baked into his DNA,” said Leo Leigh, director of a documentary about Reisman called Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler.

“I remember [Reisman] telling me that when he wanted to eat, he would wait until there was a wedding in the hotel, put on his best suit and just slip in and just sit and eat these massive, amazing meals,” said Leigh, “And then he’d be ready for the night to go and hustle table tennis.”

Reisman suffered panic attacks as early as nine years old. Playing ping pong helped with his anxiety. “The game so engrossed me, so filled my days, that I did not have time to worry,” he wrote.

“Finding this game of table tennis — and finding that he had this amazing ability — became almost like an escape, a meditation,” said Leigh.

Marty Reisman shows a behind-the-back trick shot in 1955.

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“Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one”

Reisman wanted to be the best ping pong player in the world. “To be an Einstein in your field, or a Hemingway, or a Joe Louis — there could be nothing, I imagined, more noble,” Reisman wrote. “And table tennis champions were to me Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one.”

The game was respected throughout Europe and Asia, turning ping pong stars into big names: In Marty Supreme, one who was imprisoned at Auschwitz tells the story of being spared by Nazi guards who recognize him. (Reisman’s memoir tells a similar true story of the Polish table tennis champion Alojzy “Alex” Ehrlich.)

But in the U.S., ping pong was considered a pastime people played in their basements. New York City was an exception: “Large sums of money were bet on a sport that had no standing at all in this country,” wrote Reisman.

Reisman dazzled spectators with his flair on the table.

“If you look at footage of Marty in the ’50s and ’60s, you could almost compare it to the footage of Houdini,” said Leigh. “He would blow the ball into the air and then he would, you know, knock it under his leg or just do some acrobats. It was almost like putting on a show.”

One of his gimmick shots was breaking a cigarette in two with a slam.

Marty Reisman after winning the final men’s singles game at the English Open in 1949.

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Chasing a dream “that no one respected”

Marty Supreme co-writer and director Josh Safdie grew up playing ping pong with his dad in New York City. “I had ADHD and found it to be quite helpful,” he told NPR. “It’s a sport that requires an intense amount of focus and an intense amount of precision.” Safdie said his great uncle played at Lawrence’s and used to tell him about the different characters he met there, including Reisman’s friend and competitor Dick Miles.

It was Safdie’s wife who found Reisman’s book in a thrift store and gave it to him. When he read it, Safdie was finishing a dream project that was years in the making, the 2019 movie Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. “Every step of the way, there was either a hurdle or a stop gap or a laugh in my face,” said Safdie, “And very few believers in that project.”

Safdie likened the experience to Reisman’s obsession with becoming a table tennis champion “who believed in this thing and had a dream that no one respected.”

A new racket changes the game

In 1952, Japanese player Hiroji Satoh stunned the table tennis world by winning the Men’s Singles at the World Championships playing with a new type of racket that had thick foam rubber. Unlike the traditional hardbat, the sponge rubber silenced the pock of the ball hitting the racket. Reisman wrote that the new surface caused the ball “to take eerie flights … Sometimes it floated like a knuckleball, a dead ball with no spin whatsoever. On other occasions the spin was overpowering.”

“Marty really liked the sound of the old hardbat,” said Asgarali, “When the sponge racquet came out, Marty wasn’t competitive anymore. He totally fell out of the game.”

Leigh said Reisman would tell just about anyone who would listen how Hiroji Satoh destroyed his game.

He was “constantly analyzing and reanalyzing his personality, who he is, where he’s going,” said Leigh. He would “sit with all these academics and these writers and these almost philosophers and just talk for hours” about how the rubber bat “completely” ruined his game. “He was always searching for something.”

In 1958, Reisman bought the Riverside Table Tennis Club on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a popular spot frequented by celebrities including Matthew Broderick and Dustin Hoffman. In 1997, at age 67, he won the United States Hardbat Championship.

Marty Reisman died in 2012 at age 82. A The New York Times profile of him less than a year prior started with the headline, “A Throwback Player, With a Wardrobe to Match.”

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Published
December 25, 2025
7:08 AM PST