ETS Community Conversations Summer Reading List 2025: Professional Development & Personal Growth by Jeff Dillon

How to Live in a Chaotic Climate

jeffreyadillon1 — 2025-06-03 14:10:22 UTC

Eco-distress is real. How to Live in a Chaotic Climate is here to help you rediscover meaning, joy, and connection as the tumult around us increases. Based on the Good Grief Network's acclaimed 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate program, this book unpacks the social, political, and spiritual nuances of the climate emergency, step by step.

Jeff's pick - It's been on my list for a few years now and it is time to get to it. I am not sure I've ever been more eco-stressed than I am right now!

Conservation Science: Balancing the Needs of People and Nature

jeffreyadillon1 — 2025-06-03 14:10:23 UTC

A comprehensive examination of modern conservation challenges and solutions, incorporating social science perspectives alongside ecological principles.

Jeff's pick - My 15 year old niece recently visited us and pulled this off our shelf. She is interested in conservation as she continues her high school studies so she and I are going to read this together.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

jeffreyadillon1 — 2025-06-03 14:10:25 UTC

Explores the critical skill of rethinking and unlearning, essential for educators who want to stay adaptive and innovative in their teaching approaches.

Jeff's pick - I have several of these types of books on my list for the summer (The Influential Mind is another) but this title really intrigues me. What am I taking for granted? Why do I know the things I do and assume I know about things I don't. Self and societal applications seem possible here!

For fans of Andor

jeffreyadillon1 — 2025-06-03 14:10:34 UTC

Jeff's pick - As a lifelong Star Wars fan and a viewer wanting more after the end of the recent Andor TV series, this book fills in some of the messy details of the politics from a galaxy far far away. Because, you know, everyone tunes in to Star Wars for the politics...right?

The Crucial Years

jeffreyadillon1 — 2025-06-04 17:36:49 UTC

The Crucial Years is your essential handbook to navigating the often misunderstood and overlooked years of middle childhood (ages 6–12). As a mom and clinical psychologist, Dr. Sheryl Ziegler knows firsthand how challenging these years can be for some and for others how they are years where a parent thinks they can finally catch their breath in between the gap from preschool and middle school. Dr. Ziegler masterfully unlocks the enigma surrounding modern puberty and offers evidence-based strategies, interventions, and answers to middle childhood’s most perplexing questions and concerns. In these pages, she provides:

Jeff's pick - With three 6-year olds I am interested in their development as they move from Kinder and start to "grow-up." I have also given up on good books about multiples, hopefully there are some nuggets in this one.

The Giver

gdmnasa — 2025-06-05 17:56:55 UTC

Geneviève's pick: For my book club with my friends, our theme next time is "books from our childhood that changed our lives." This is the choice of one of my friends, and I haven't read it in years. It has new dimensions now!

johnpceballos — 2025-06-05 18:13:52 UTC

I've been wanting to pick this up for some time now, and hopefully I'll get to it this summer. My understanding is that it is focused on finding win-win solutions for complex problems. I've heard the author speak and she has founded an organization dedicated to the concepts in this book.

Visual Thinking

ccwnasa — 2025-06-05 19:28:05 UTC

Temple Grandin revolutionized the livestock industry. The way she views the world and the compassion within her that she has so willingly shared with the world is so valuable.

It took me too long to realize that learning could accomplished in ways other than the traditional school of thought. It opened my world! I highly recommend it.

johnpceballos — 2025-06-05 19:29:46 UTC

I've been meaning to pick this one up for some time too....it's often regarding as one of the first books to examine how modern humans impact the natural environment in significant ways. I learned about it while visiting nearby Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historic Site.

johnpceballos — 2025-06-05 19:31:23 UTC

I've been on a mission to reconnect with my home state. This fun and easy read is the first novel from climate activist Bill McKibben

A River Lost

2025-06-05 19:32:35 UTC

All about the people who work and live on the Columbia River and the way its engineering has benefitted and hurt different people in a socioenvironmental multi-memoir.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

2025-06-05 19:36:12 UTC

Just a WWII aviation memoir. I like nonfiction so this was an exciting and interesting historical read. My edition was printed in 1943 so I don't know if people can still find it.

Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief

2025-06-05 19:45:57 UTC

THIS IS FANTASTIC! It's a French series of Sherlock Holmes short stories except instead of being about the detective in a mystery it's about a thief and the ways he cleverly and fashionably commits crime rather than solves them. Because Arsene Lupin is a master of disguise, his presence isn't revealed until later in each story, so any character, including the narrator, could be Arsene Lupin until he reveals himself. It was also written around 1912 so it has a real charm to it.

The Three-Body Problem

dariellerocca — 2025-06-05 20:18:01 UTC

One of the most through provoking books I've read in a long time, and my mind keeps returning to it after more than a year. In a nutshell, it tackles every aspect of living on Earth and being a human.

The Treeline

dariellerocca — 2025-06-05 20:26:16 UTC

Discusses each of the boreal forests in different parts of the world, and how climate change is affecting them and the people who have relied on that land for thousands of years. It is beautifully written, and Rawlence clearly immersed himself in the topic and visited each of the sites, no matter how difficult they were to get to. It's also a fairly heavy topic, so give yourself space to breathe after each section.

A World on the Wing

jeffreyadillon1 — 2025-06-06 15:01:54 UTC

In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we’ve learned of these key migrations―how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an annual basis―is nothing short of extraordinary.

Andrew's pick for its eloquence and interesting prose and approach to this topic of epic migrations and evolutionary wonder.

Night Magic

galerublee — 2025-06-09 17:58:57 UTC

This book was a fun and magical read which has several inspiring elements I want to add to my night hikes including the value of darkness. I appreciated how Leigh Ann faced her own fears of the dark and opened herself up to a whole new world we seldom immerse ourselves in. I'd also like to see the synchronistic fire flies and blue ghosts in the Appalachians and go to a Mothapoolza!

City of Girls

2025-06-09 18:58:23 UTC

Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.