Islands of Abandonment and further reading

‘Islands of Abandonment’ is a travel and nature book, full of transporting descriptions of abandoned places and fascinating insights on environmental processes. It is a book about history, and about the future. With locations including West Lothian, Chernobyl, Detroit, and the ‘Zone Rouge’ in Verdun, Flyn takes the reader on an international journey to see what humans have done to the planet, and what nature is doing in the places we’ve abandoned. It’s a book as fascinating as it is moving.

One of the greatest pleasures of reading is making links to other books and ideas. A really good book can become a central point in a spider’s web of thought and debate. Reading ‘Islands of Abandonment’, I was also re-reading and re-considering other books on natural recovery, on the complexity of eco-systems, and on the human relationship with the environment. If you’d like to read more about the natural world and about the fascinating debates around environmental preservation and rewilding, I also recommend these books.