Preface. My favorite book in high school was Gibbs “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. I never imagined I’d live long enough to see my own civilization collapse. After all, we were taught in school that America was the greatest country that had ever existed or would ever exist. I was sure our nation would last for thousands of years as it got better and better, with flying cars, space travel, and unimaginable inventions to come. But alas, our civilization is powered with finite fossil fuels. Ah well, the good news is that peak oil happened in 2018, and will soon decline at an exponentially growing rate of 6%, preventing a hothouse earth. Climate change will bedevil us for hundreds of years, but it was the wrong future to prepare for. Energy efficiency, organic agriculture, and family planning for energy decline would have saved more lives and used our remaining resources and time much better, as well as reduced greenhouse gases.

More booklists

Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report

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War

• S. A. LeBlanc. Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage. 2003
• J. Weatherford. Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World
• J. Weatherford. Secret History of the Mongol Queens
• Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game:  Blood and Oil in Central Asia. 2003
• Michael Klare. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. 2001
• Chalmers Johnson. 2004. The Sorrows Of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.  
• J. Matloff. No friends but the mountains: Dispatches from the world’s violent highlands
• Margaret MacMillan. War: How conflict Shaped Us. 2020
• P. Coffee. American arsenal. A century of waging war.
• Robert Baer. 2004. Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.
• Ahmed Rashid. 2000. Taliban. Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.
• Peter Turchin. War and Peace and War. The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations. 2007
• David Berreby. Us and Them. Understanding Your Tribal Mind. 2005
• Azar Gat. War in Human Civilization. 2008
• Lawrence Keeley. War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. 1997
• James Waller.  Becoming Evil. How ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing. 2007
• Philip Gourevitch. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. 1999
• Daniel Goldhagen. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans & the Holocaust. 1997
• Wrangham & Peterson. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. 1997
• Michael Ghiglieri. 2000.The Dark Side of Man: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence
• Richard Rhodes. 2000. Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist.  
• Giles MacDonogh. After the Reich.  The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation.
• C. Andrew. Secret world: A history of intelligence.  980 pages
• M. Matthews. Head strong: how psychology is revolutionizing war

Cyber War

• Richard Clarke.2012.  Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security 
• Joel Brenner. 2011. America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat Matrix 

What it’s like to be a soldier            

• Guy Sajer. The Forgotten Soldier      
• David Finkel. The Good Soldiers      
• Peter Goldman. Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did to Us          

Extinction

• Johan Rockström. 2009. Planetary Boundaries.  
• Lisa-ann Gershwin. 2013.Stung! On jellyfish blooms and the future of the ocean     
• Mark Lynas. 2008. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet       
• Peter Ward. 2008. Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, Mass Extinctions of the Past
• A. Robok. 2007. Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Pollution

• T. Colborn. 1997. Our Stolen Future: Are we threatening our fertility, survival?
• John McCormick. 1997. Acid Earth: The Global Threat of Acid Pollution.
• J. Watts. 2010.            When a Billion Chinese Jump: how china will save mankind–Or Destroy It 
• J. Shapiro. 2001. Mao’s War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China
• Thomas Hayden. Trashing the Oceans          
• W.Rathje. 2001. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. What our garbage tells us about ourselves
• Dan Fagin. 1999. Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry manipulates science, bends the law, and endangers your health
• Thomas Hayden. 2002. Trashing the Oceans An armada of plastic rides the waves, & sea creatures are suffering                       

Resource depletion

• L. F. Konikow. 2013. Groundwater depletion in the United States (1900-2008)
• Sandra Postel. 1999. Pillar of Sand, Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?  
• R. Glennon. 2004. Water Follies: groundwater pumping & the date of America’s fresh waters                     
• John Opie. 2000. Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land     
• Bruce Franklin. 2008. The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America          
• M. Harris. 1998. Lament For An Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery
• Richard Ellis. 2003. The Empty Ocean: Plundering the World’s Marine Life          
• N. Middleton. 1997.  World Atlas of Desertification
• Rick Weiss. 2003. Ocean species depleted by fishing: Worldwide numbers down 90 percent since the 1950s  May 15, 2003 Washington.Post         
• Tim Radford. 2005. Two-thirds of world’s resources ‘used up’
• Chris Bright. 1998. Life out of Bounds: BioInvasion in a Borderless World

Limits to Growth

• Donella Meadows. 2004. The Limits to Growth: The 30 year update      
• Vaclav Smil. 2000. Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production.
• K. Gever. 1991. Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades           
• D. & M. Fisher. 2001. The Nitrogen Bomb.  Discover magazine      
• William Catton. 192. Overshoot        
• M. Wackernagel. 1995. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth
• Laurie Garrett. 1995.  The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance.  
• Hopfenberg . 2001. Human population numbers as a function of food supply

Overpopulation                    

• Roy Beck & Leon Kolankiewicz        The Environmental Movement’s Retreat From Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970-1998).      
• Garrett Hardin. 1999. The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia.
• Garrett Hardin. 1995. The Immigration Dilemma: Avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons.           
• V. Abernethy. 2000.Population Politics: The Choices That Shape Our Future         
• Bill McKibben. 1998. A Special Moment in History.  Atlantic Monthly      
• Thomas Homer-Dixon.2001. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence.  
• Jennifer Viegas. 2003. 1,000 Times Too Many Humans.    

Collapse

• John Perlin. 2005. A forest journey: the story of wood and civilization.
• David Montgomery. 2007. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
• N. Ahmed. 2017. Failing states, collapsing system, biophysical triggers of political violence.
• P. Turchin. Two books: “Secular cycles” and “War and Peace and War”
• United Nations. 2016. Global material flows and resources productivity
• Jared Diamond. 2004. Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
• J. Friedrichs. 2010. Global energy crunch: how different parts of the world would react to a peak oil scenario
• E. H. Cline. 2014. 1177 B.C. The year civilization collapsed
• Peter Godwin. 2007. Zimbabwe: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun   
• T. Egan. 2006. The worst hard time: the untold story of those who survived the Dust Bowl          
• Robert Constanza. 2007. Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth           
• Albert Bartlett. Arithmetic, Population, and Energy
• W. Ophuls. Immoderate greatness: why civilizations fail

Collapse, Russia                   

• Dmitry Orlov. 2005. How Russians survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Stephen Wegren. 2005. Russia’s Food Policies and Globalization   

Collapse, North Korea      

• B. Demick. 2010. Nothing to envy. Ordinary lives in North Korea.
• Y. Park. 2015. In order to live: a north Korean girl’s journey to freedom.
• P. McKenna. 2013. Inside North Korea’s environmental collapse. PBS.
• Dale Allen Pfeiffer. 2003. Drawing lessons from experience; the agricultural crises in North Korea and Cuba   
• S. Kim. Without you, there is no us: undercover among the sons of North Korea’s elite

Collapse, Cuba

• OXFAM. 2001. Cuba: Going against the grain

Collapse, Roman Empire

• P. Heather. Empires and barbarians. The fall of Rome and the birth of Europe
• P. Heather. The fall of the Roman empire. A new history of Rome and the barbarians
• B. Ward-Perkins. The fall of Rome and the end of civilization
• Kyle Harper. The fate of Rome. Climate, disease, and the end of an empire.
• E. Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  
• T. Holland. Rubicon: the last years of the Roman republic

Infrastructure

• R. Courland. 2011. Concrete Planet
• V. Beiser. 2018. The world in a grain: the story of sand and how it transformed civilization.
• ASCE  2017 American Society of Civil Engineers Report Card for America’s Infrastructure
• GAO. 2014. Energy infrastructure risks and adaptation efforts (climate change)
• DOE. 2013. U.S. Energy sector vulnerabilities to climate change and extreme weather.
• Brian Hayes.  2005. Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape.  
• Kate Ascher. 2005. The Works: Anatomy of a City.  
• EPA. 2002. The Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis.   
• R. George. 2014. The big necessity. The unmentionable world of human waste and why it matters 

Peak Minerals

• Ugo Bardi. Extracted. How the quest for mineral wealth is plundering the planet
• V. Beiser. The world in a grain: the story of sand and how it transformed civilization
• J. Waldman. Rust: the longest war
• K. Veronese. Rare: the high-stakes race to satisfy our need for the scarcest metals on earth
• M. Sheller. Aluminum dreams. The making of light modernity

Transportation

• A. Friedemann. When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation
• M. Levinson. How the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger
• E. Swift. The big roads. The untold story of the engineers, visionaries, and trailblazers who created the American superhighway
• E. Humes. Door to door. The magnificent, maddening, mysterious world of transportation

Postcarbon life     

• S. Vogel. 2003. Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle
• T. Thwaites. 2012. The toaster project: Build a simple electric appliance from scratch
• J. Stratton.  1981. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier          
• Greene. 2008. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America
• R. Winston. Life in the Middle Ages.
• Jean Gimpel.   1977. Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.   
• George Huppert.  1998. After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe 
• E. A. Wrigley. Energy and the English industrial revolution.
• E. A. Wrigley. The path to sustained growth: England’s transition from an organic economy to an industrial society
• R. White. 1993. It’s your misfortune and none of my own. A new history of the American West.  
• S. Ambrose. 1997. Undaunted Courage.  Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the opening of the American West          
• R. Massie. 1996. Peter the Great: His Life and World          
• B. Tuchman. 1979. Distant Mirror: The calamitous fourteenth century. 
• M. Holloway. 1966.    Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880          
• Robert Hine. 1983. California’s Utopian Colonies    
• D. E. Pitzer. 1997. America’s Communal Utopias     
• H. Norberg-Hodge. 1992. Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh 
• R. Ekirch. At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past
• D. Cordingly. Under the Black Flag. The Romance & the reality of life among the Pirates