Quite simply, this is the climate book of the year. It includes contributions from dozens of scientists, journalists, activists and other experts, including Katherine Hayhoe, Mary Annaïse Heglar, Emily Atkin, Kate Marvel, Kendra Pierre-Louis and Naomi Klein — as well as a wide selection of poets — who collectively aim to build a community of women climate leaders.

I've been avoiding reading climate change books because I thought I'd either be bored or scared. And while yes, what's happening with the climate is terrifying, Ayana and Katharine brought together a group of powerful, honest, and diverse voices who will resonate with every reader. This is THE book on climate change to add to your shelf. There is immense suffering in this world, but this book shows that we do have the power to make a difference. READ THIS BOOK.

This book caught my eye on NetGalley and then I didn’t get very far into it before I set it aside and forgot about it. I then came across “How to Save a Planet” from Gimlet Media and one of the hosts, Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, mentioned her book... this one. I went back to it and started reading again. There are parts that are hard to get into and there are parts that are scary. That said this book also offers hope! It brings together many people in one book that offers so many different viewpoints and ways to tackle climate change. This book is a great overview that offers so many people to look into further for more research and ways to take action. I’m so glad I read it.

All We Can Save edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Keeble Wilkinson is a collection of essays and poems by a diverse group of women who are leading in the field of climate change. The book is divided into themes including Root, Advocate, Reframe, Reshape, Persist, Feel, Nourish, and Rise. Rise ends the book on a beautiful and hopeful note with a call to action to addressing climate concerns. In Persist, I was moved by the poem “Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love?” by Ailish Hopper as it illustrates the harmful ways we have tried to ignore, justify, rewrite, and repackage our history and current involvement in the climate crisis. There are so many amazing writers contained in this collection and have provided a spotlight for many diverse activists that deserve recognition for their work. There are many calls to actions throughout the collection and provide information on the organizations and people doing so much great work in climate change. I recommend this book to anyone hoping to learn more about climate change, what they can do, while also reading beautiful work.

Many thanks to the publisher One World - Random House and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This collection is phenomenal. As a fledgeling climate activist and a zero waste enthusiast, I soaked this book up like a sponge. There is so much knowledge, insight, passion, and power in these pages- it will seriously blow you away.

The one thing I was not a fan of was the introduction to the book. It simply came across as divisive. As a reader, I would’ve appreciated an introduction that leaned more toward inclusivity.

Thank you so much for this ARC! A more comprehensive review will be available on social media.

To begin with: I can't claim to be unbiased or a disinterested observer (but, no one can). No one reads 108 books about climate change without deep investment, and most of the contributors in this collection I am already familiar with; if not in books, then in newsletters, articles, scientific papers, youtube series, podcasts, documentaries, or TED talks. All We Can Save is practically a roll-call of 2020 Climate Heroines (Katherine Hayhoe! Dr. Wilkinson! Dr. Johnson! Amy Westervelt, Dr. Marvel, Adrienne Maree Brown, Mary Anne Hitt, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Emily Atkin, Varshini Prakash, Susanne Moser, Mary Annaise Heglar, Leah Stokes! etc.), and I was excited enough to read it before my NetGalley request was approved (so yes, I received a free electronic copy in exchange for a review; and then I bought a copy in actual paper because it's really good and ebooks give me a headache).

There was really no chance I wasn't going to love it, and, spoiler alert, I do. The editors have done a great job in compiling climate perspectives that centre black and indigenous women climate leaders, and address everything from climate grief and staying motivated, through advocacy strategies and how to talk about climate change, through specific highly technical solutions like regenerative ocean farming and soil conservation techniques. The essays are interwoven with fabulous poems, by poets like Ada Limon, Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, Alice Walker and Sharon Olds. Nothing is going to make me more likely to buy a book, statistically speaking, than the combination of amazing poetry and climate action. Add in some feminism and I'm done for.

There's a lot to love about this essay collection, and only one glaring disappointment.

To begin with, if by some chance you're not familiar with at least half of the names in the contributors' list, you're in luck: you'll get a beautifully written, elevator-pitch-length summary of their work, from Katherine Hayhoe's advice on talking about climate change, to Rhiana Gunn-Wright's work on the Green New Deal, Mary Ann Hitt's work closing hundreds of coal plants, Emily Atkin's climate journalism (see Heated), Adrienne Maree Brown's Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, and more. If you want to know who is doing what on climate action and why, so you can figure out whose work to follow, participate in and promote: start here.

There were no bad essays, and many of them were just breathtaking. Pretty much every piece in Feel was a standout. Under the Weather (Ash Sanders) made me cry, and of course anything by Mary Annaise Heglar is wonderful (Home is Always Worth It). Sarah Stillman's Like the Monarch uses animal migration as a positive analogy for human migration and provides a beautiful counter-point to fascism and xenophobic rhetoric. Heaven or High Water by Sarah Miller, previously published on Popula, is a hilarious and eye-opening first-person account of climate impacts on the Miami Beach real estate market. I didn't necessarily expect to read pieces on mobilizing fashion models or the 1% to foster the revolution, but I enjoyed reading them.

None of this leaves a lot of obvious room for disappointment, but here it is, and it might not have been so glaring for me if I weren't reading Care Work at the same time:

The book beautifully centres indigenous and black leadership, the importance of women, the need to build in class and income disparities and analysis, considers climate displacement from the global south, and in general considers thoughtfully and in depth every marginalized community but one: disabled people.

As a type 1 diabetic and a single mom to a disabled teen, that does sting. Worse, it didn't have to be that way: many of the leaders they discuss struggled with health issues or disabilities of various kinds (Adrienne Rich had arthritis, Rachel Carson died of cancer, Audre Lorde had cancer and vision loss, Mary Oliver struggled with PTSD, Octavia Butler was dyslexic, etc.). Greta Thunberg is autistic, for heaven's sake, and calls her autism a superpower. Chances are good that a bunch of this book's contributors have disabilities or chronic illnesses, but you would never know it from the text. Both All We Can Save and Care Work discuss Octavia Butler's Earthseed books, but only Care Work acknowledges and discusses that Lauren Olamina was disabled, and it was her disability that made her an effective leader.

There were so many natural opportunities to bring up disability and disability justice, and they were all overlooked. One of the essays, At the Intersections by Jacqui Patterson, discussed in passing one person with hearing loss and a few others with AIDS, as people who need care and assistance because of climate change, which is valid and true, but nothing in the book discussed disability or chronic illness in terms of leadership or contribution--despite Greta, despite the disabled writers quoted. I hope the editors have future editions in which this can be remedied, because as true as it is that disabled people are often overlooked in emergency response planning and exposed to much higher mortality risks from climate impacts and should be included on that basis, it's also true that disability justice has a lot to offer climate activism.

As just one example, what would climate activism (and environmentalism and conservation work more generally) look like if we could release our cultural vice grip on cure as the only valid goal or outcome? Think-pieces on the futility of our work, given that we're past the point of being able to return our world to the pre-industrial condition of 1550 or pre-colonial condition of 1450, and the grief and difficulty of loving a broken world, allowing yourself to care about environments that don't look like they used to, etc., are as common in green publications as kentucky bluegrass in a Canadian suburb, and about as worthwhile. Do you know who has grappled already with knowing that some things can't be fixed, can't be cured, and yet are worth loving, and offer lives worth living with lots of joy and community? Disabled people. Ask them (/us).

Or not, but, you know, you're suffering needlessly, and this will affect your work. Disability justice advocates have expertise and relevant skills for climate work, and it is such a shame that this otherwise very comprehensive collection didn't take advantage.

If I could have given this 4 1/2 stars, I would have; I wanted to round it up to 5, but dammit, they left out my kid.