Review: The Story of More

The Story of More, by Hope Jahren (Vintage 2020)

First line: “Important men have been arguing about global change since before I was born.”

I picked this book up because it was this year’s Books & Community book for our local library, and it seemed like a great way to kick off my spring slow-but-steady reading.

In this extremely readable non-fiction title, Hope Jahren takes the reader on a broad tour of all issues environmental, covering energy, animal life, ocean and water problems, food, climate, weather, and more. Her approach is very digestible; she begins each chapter with a personal anecdote, which gives us a familiar footing from which to address each problematic topic. Any of the issues she covers could (and are, I’m sure) be entire books of their own, but her goal seems to be to give us a broad scope so that we can choose which issue or issues are most important to us. While the dreadful list of environmental issues seems just never-ending and hopeless, Jahren insists that she is still hopeful about the future of our world and humankind. She reiterates time and again that we definitely have a lot of work to do, but that if each of us chooses something small to start with, something we are passionate about, we can turn this ship around and continue to thrive on Earth.

For anyone who feels paralyzed with where to start when confronting climate change, or feel kind of like you’ve been burying your head in the sand where this is concerned, I think The Story of More is a great starting point.