A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)

Published in the sixties, this book is credited with inspiring the nascent environmental movement and remains influential to this day.

Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia by Bernhard Grzimek (originally pub. 1967, rev. 2003)

Attenborough mentions Grzimek as an early influence: “At that time [1950s], it appeared inconceivable that human beings, a single species, might one day have the power to threaten something as vast as” the Serengeti (34). “Yet that was exactly the fear of a visionary scientist, Bernhard Grzmiek [who was] Director of the Frankfurt Zoo” (34). The Encyclopedia is Grzimek’s masterwork.

Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983)

A legendary figure in conservation circles—who was also infamously murdered, perhaps by disgruntled poachers—Fossey worked with gorillas in the jungles of Rwanda. Attenborough visits her at her camp and encounters a group of curious gorillas himself (56-59). The book was turned into a film starring Sigourney Weaver, who was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her performance, in 1988.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (1997)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel describes how civilizations developed across the globe. Instead of assuming inherent discrepancies in the abilities of different human groups in different areas, Diamond argues that inequalities in development and technological advancement among societies are the result of geographical differentiations and environmental advantages. The book was turned into a PBS series in 2005.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a Twenty-first Century Economist by Kate Raworth (2017)

Attenborough mentions this University of Oxford economist’s work, which focuses on social foundations as well as planetary boundaries in determining sustainability for the future. Attenborough argues that “’[s]ustainability in all things’ should be our species’ philosophy; the Doughnut Model, our compass for the journey” (128).

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet by Johan Rockstrom and Owen Gaffney (2021)

Rockstrom is one of the pioneering voices in Earth system science. This book elaborates on the planetary boundaries and “the resilience of ecosystems across the globe” that Attenborough discusses at the beginning of Part 2 (109). He also mentions the work of Will Steffen, an American chemist, who has co-authored academic articles with Rockstrom.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow (2021)

In part, a direct response to Diamond’s work, the authors of The Dawn of Everything work to upend numerous entrenched assumptions about the origins of complex human societies, urban settlements and nation-states, and the global problem of social inequality. They suggest that there are no singular origins and that the history of humanity is much more complex and interactive. Click here for the SuperSummary guide to this work.