We must reimagine our relationship to the environment before it is too late.

As wildfires char the American West, extreme weather transforms landscapes, glaciers retreat, and climate zones shift, we are undeniably experiencing the effects of the climate crisis in more and more destructive ways. Climate change is impacting every inhabited region of the world, but there is much we can still do.

Unsettling explores human impacts on the environment through science, popular culture, personal narrative, and landscape. Using the stories of animals, landscapes, and people who have exhibited resilience in the face of persistent colonization across the North American continent, science writer Elizabeth Weinberg explores how climate change is a direct result of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, and heteronormativity. Travel through the deep sea; along Louisiana's vanishing bayous; down the Colorado, Mississippi, and Potomac rivers; and over the Cascade Mountains, and examine how we as humans, particularly white humans, have drawn a stark line between human and animal, culture and nature, in order to exploit anything and anyone we find useful. With gorgeous and pointed prose, Weinberg weaves together science, personal essay, history, and pop culture to propose a new way of thinking about climate change—one that is rooted in queerness and antiracism.

Available from Broadleaf Books

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Praise for Unsettling

“Weinberg's fresh observations and lyrical descriptions of wildlife and various environments create vivid word pictures for readers, and her unique book deserves a wide audience.”—Booklist, starred review

“What's most striking is the rage and sadness we hear, particularly regarding those who haven't done enough to save our planet, the AIDS epidemic, and the prospect of extinction.”—AudioFile

“A love letter to the environment and a triumph of ecological imagination.”—Lidia Yuknavitch, national bestselling author of The Book of Joan and The Chronology of Water

“At once a celebration of our world, a Jeremiad, and a memoir, Unsettling makes the stakes of climate change devastatingly clear. Whether she’s illuminating the biodiversity of the site of a whale fall in the deep sea or the scale of the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets or the traumatized resilience of urban coyotes, Weinberg is a passionate advocate for the ways in which we’re going to have to reconceive our very relation to the planet in order to become our own heroes and turn aside oncoming catastrophe.”—Jim Shepard, author of Like You’d Understand, Anyway and Phase Six

“Unsettling reminds us that beauty has not just existed but persists. Weinberg asks us what might happen if we meet each other’s gaze, grieve what is lost, and resist the certain doom of ‘It’s too late,’ to be the heroes we each need in what still is and what will be.” —Jenny Bruso, founder of Unlikely Hikers 

“A wonderfully scientific and passionately personal exploration of the intertwining human disasters of climate change and lack of social justice. Required reading for anyone thinking we are the dominant species.”—Jon Scieszka, First US National Ambassador of Children’s Literature, and author of the climate-activist graphic novel series AstroNuts

“In braiding Weinberg’s own coming-out story with her profound connections to the world around her, Unsettling presents a path away from an antagonistic relationship to the natural world and toward a fluid, equitable, and hopeful future.”—Maya Sonenberg, author of Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters (winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize for Fiction) 

“Weinberg is a compelling tour guide, deepening our connection to the planet and one another.”—Hannah Malvin, founder and director of Pride Outside