What is the Green New Deal? This star-studded essay collection — think Klein, Bill McKibben, and the environmental justice giant Rev. William J. Barber — clearly lays out the urgent whys, whats, and hows. It’s a super useful one-stop resource. And it puts the “radical” accusations to rest: Don’t most of us want a baked-in-green economy that’s infinitely more equitable than the one we have? These authors make the case that, ultimately, these big, ambitious policy proposals are just plain decency and good ol’ common sense. By Rob Nixon I’ll end with this influential gem by Princeton’s own Rob Nixon and his coinage of the term “slow violence.” Nixon argues that environmental devastation that plays out more slowly — say, how oil and gas companies slowly and surely lay waste globally to ecosystems, and especially to low-income communities that inhabit them — is brutal violence all the same, even if far less visible than oil spills, bombings, and other more media-ready catastrophes. An English professor, Nixon showcases how writers in the global south have worked to make these crises alarmingly visible. Honestly, though, he had me with the powerful first 50 pages.