The Journal 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau (NYRB, £14.99; Buy this book 667pp)
There are other nature writers, other philosophers, other natural historians, other diarists, other political polemicists, but there has never been anyone who combined them all so thoroughly in his own person than Thoreau. Damion Searls’ edition of Thoreau’s journals, a lifetime’s work, some 7,000 pages in the original manuscript, attempts to preserve the continuity of Thoreau’s profound contemplation of nature. Like God, Thoreau sees the sparrow fall. He then writes about it in prose that is romantic and scientific, poetic and precise. In December 1853, aged 36, after a short canoeing trip, he said: “When I write about it at home I understand so well, comparatively! And I write with such repose and freedom from exaggeration.” He was perfectly right.
Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells — Our Ride to the Renewable Future by Amanda Little (HarperPress, £12.99; Buy this book; 446pp)
Now here’s an idea for a stand-up comedian looking to pitch a book to a publisher: look at your daily life and work out how dependent you are on oil-based products and non-renewable fuels. Fortunately, Amanda Little, an investigative journalist, got there first and she’s faster, funnier, smarter and more tenacious than anyone else. Even veggie burgers, she realised, come from crops treated with oil-derived fertilisers. How green can you really be when you have to type on a petrochemical keyboard? She went looking for an escape from the “oil = power” equation that rules our plastics-based culture and found long-term reasons for optimism for an energy future beyond oil. Little has a big voice and tells her story with style.
Star: The Life and Wild Times of Warren Beatty by Peter Biskind (Simon & Schuster, £17.99; Buy this book; 627pp)
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Biskind, a longtime friend and colleague of Warren Beatty, however often he talked to Beatty about a biography, could never get him to agree: “Why would he, a self-confessed control freak, turn over something as important as his own story, his own legacy to someone else?” In the end, Biskind has had to depend on the kindness of others to get the Beatty story — not much is known, and nobody is talking, about Beatty’s childhood, so Biskind focuses on Beatty the businessman, makes what he can of the famous love affairs with Leslie Caron, Julie Christie and others, and Beatty’s public commitment to politics. He makes a reasonable fist of describing a difficult man who has survived Hollywood’s most obvious pitfalls.