Penguin Books Australia

The Conundrum is a mind-changing manifesto about the environment, efficiency, and the real path to sustainability.

A revelatory tale of science, adventure, and modern myth.

When the writer Donovan Hohn heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, and read up on Arctic science and geography. 'But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away.' Hohn's accidental odyssey pulls him into...

Plastic built the modern world. Where would we be without bike helmets, toothbrushes, babies bottles and pacemakers? But a century into our love affair with plastic, we're starting to realise it's not such a healthy relationship. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this engaging and...

From one of the world's great geopolitical analysts, here is a terrifying glimpse of the none-too-distant future, when climate change will force the world's powers into a desperate struggle for advantage and even survival.

In this major new book, paleoclimatologist Curt Stager vividly shows how what we do to the environment in the 21st century will affect the next 100,000 years of life on this planet.

When Jeff Goodell first encountered the term 'geo-engineering', he had a vague sense that it involved outlandish schemes to counteract global warming. As a journalist, he was deeply sceptical. But he was also intrigued. The planet was in trouble. Could geo-engineers help?

GLOBAL WARMING – the result of human activity or just another environmentalist bandwagon?

His interest piqued by the profound policy implications of global warming, and by evidence he'd seen on his motorcycle tour of the world, Gareth Morgan decided to find out the answer to the above question.

'Dry heat and hot, dry winds worked upon a land already dry, to suck from it the last, least drop of moisture. Men who had lived their lives in the bush went their ways in the shadow of dread expectancy. But though they felt the imminence of danger they could not tell that it was to be far greater than they could imagine. They had not lived long enough.'

- Report of the Royal Commission into the bushfires...

Terrorist attacks. Natural disasters. Domestic crackdowns. Economic collapse. Riots. Wars. Disease. Starvation.

What can you do to prepare for when it all hits the fan?

You can learn to be self-sufficient and survive outside the system.

'I've started to look at the world through apocalypse eyes.' So begins Neil Strauss' thrilling new book: one of the most original and provocative narratives of the...

The ways Australians live and think have been shaped by water — or rather by the lack of it.

The Water Dreamers tells the story of the settlement of Australia and how our culture has been shaped by the scarcity of water and by the need to fill the imagined silence of the continent with the sounds of civilisation. It's the story of who we are today as much as a history of how the country grew...

From Granada, in the southeast, to Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest, Tony followed the Via Mozarabe and the Via de la Plata, two of the many pilgrim trails that...

This meticulously documented call-to-action reveals extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than officially indicated - and that we're almost at the point of no return.

Serious climate-change impacts are already happening: large ice-sheets are disintegrating, sea-level rises will reach 5 metres this century, and we are seeing devastating species loss.

A timely reminder of how far we've come since the days of routine slaughter, of how hard conservationists fought to bring it to an end, and how vigilant we must be in making sure that the dark days of whaling are behind us forever.' - Tim Winton

How will global warming affect our lives?

Is it the cause of wilder storms and more frequent droughts?

Are these events inevitable? 

Tim Flannery makes this urgent issue completely accessible. He tells the fascinating story of climate change over millions of years to help us understand the predicament we face. By burning fossil fuels we are increasing the levels...

Environmental disasters. Terrorist wars. Energy scarcity. Economic failure. Is this the world's inevitable fate, a downward spiral that ultimately spells the collapse of societies? Perhaps, says acclaimed author Thomas Homer-Dixon-or perhaps these crises can actually lead to renewal for ourselves and our planet.

Our civilisation is facing its greatest threat – an unprecedented heating of our planet that looks set to destroy the...