H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z

Adapting from essays originally published in the New Yorker, science writer Kolbert (Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future) offers 26 texts—one for each letter of the alphabet—interrogating the climate crisis. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author is skilled at making complex material accessible, and while some of the topics of this volume are bleak (as one might expect, considering the current state of the planet), listeners will find humorous and lighthearted material as well. B is for “Blah Blah Blah” (a reference to Greta Thunberg’s now-famous speech at the 2021 Youth4Climate conference), and U is for “Uncertainty,” a sentiment listeners will likely recognize. F is for “Flight,” describing Kolbert’s journey in a fully electric plane, and G is for “Green Concrete,” a promising development in an area plagued by high carbon emissions. Kolbert reads the foreword and the essay for Z (“(Ground) Zero”), while Eunice Wong is the primary narrator. Listeners will appreciate the calmness and smoothness with which Wong delivers compelling, harrowing, and even hopeful facts.