At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth

An environmental journalist explores how our relationship to home is shifting in an era of planetary upheaval, offering stories of resilient communities on the front lines of climate change and reflecting on how to reimagine our lives.

This past summer, one in three Americans experienced some kind of weather disaster--from the flooding that overtook coastal streets and the unprecedented heat wave that overwhelmed the Pacific Northwest to the wildfires that forced many to flee their homes. Climate change used to be a distant forecast; now it has begun reaching into the familiar, threatening our basic safety, and forcing us to re-examine who we are and how we live. We are all in a more precarious position now. What happens when the rhythms, the seasons, and the known patterns within which we have built our homes and our lives go off-kilter?

In At Home on an Unruly Planet, environmental journalist Madeline Ostrander reflects on what climate change means not as an abstract scientific or political problem but as a palpable force that is now affecting us at home. In lyrical prose, she offers a series of deeply reported and vivid accounts of people fighting to protect places they love from increasingly dangerous circumstances--a firefighter and small-town mayor striving to rebuild a community after catastrophic fires in the Pacific Northwest; a historic preservationist working to protect one of North America's most historic cities, St. Augustine, Florida, from rising seas; an urban gardener trying to transform the future of an oil town in northern California that's been plagued by fossil-fuel disasters; and an Alaska Native community heading for higher ground as their old village site erodes. Each is not just a story of disaster but also of hard-won optimism, resilience, and creativity--a reflection of the strengths we all need to persevere in a time of uncertainty. Interspersed among these accounts are a series of essays meditating on the idea of home: Who do we become as the conditions of life change around us? Can we still reimagine how we live in order to protect our homes and the planet we inhabit?

At Home on an Unruly Planet is required reading for anyone who wants to make a home in the 21st-century, an era of both climate crisis and hope.

From rural Alaska to coastal Florida, a vivid account of Americans working to protect the places they call home in an era of climate crisis

How do we find a sense of home and rootedness in a time of unprecedented upheaval? What happens when the seasons and rhythms in which we have built our lives go off-kilter?

Once a distant forecast, climate change is now reaching into the familiar, threatening our basic safety and forcing us to reexamine who we are and how we live. In At Home on an Unruly Planet, science journalist Madeline Ostrander reflects on this crisis not as an abstract scientific or political problem but as a palpable force that is now affecting all of us at home. She offers vivid accounts of people fighting to protect places they love from increasingly dangerous circumstances. A firefighter works to rebuild her town after catastrophic western wildfires. A Florida preservationist strives to protect one of North America's most historic cities from rising seas. An urban farmer struggles to transform a California city plagued by fossil fuel disasters. An Alaskan community heads for higher ground as its land erodes.

Ostrander pairs deeply reported stories of hard-won optimism with lyrical essays on the strengths we need in an era of crisis. The book is required reading for anyone who wants to make a home in the twenty-first century.