Comfort · Challenge · The outdoors
The Comfort Crisis
Michael Easter
Michael Easter explores modern comfort and voluntary challenge through reporting and an extended expedition in Alaska. The book opens a conversation about convenience, effort and our relationship with the outdoors.
A question through HSE
What changes when effort and attention are part of meaningful participation in the world? Growing, making, repairing and contributing offer everyday ways to explore that question.
Read critically: distinguish the author’s experiences and broad arguments from evidence that applies across different people and circumstances.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Meaning · Responsibility · Human agency
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor Frankl reflects on his imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps and explores the search for meaning. His account brings purpose, responsibility and our responses to circumstances into a difficult and enduring conversation.
A question through HSE
How is purpose sustained through relationships, shared commitments and meaningful work? Consider both personal agency and the social and material conditions that support or constrain it.
Read this testimony in its historical context. Its reflections on meaning invite discussion alongside questions of vulnerability, care and the limits of individual control.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Nature · Culture · Belonging
Sacred Nature
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong considers how religious traditions have shaped human relationships with nature. She explores gratitude, reverence and everyday practices as ways to renew that relationship.
A question through HSE
How do cultural stories and daily habits shape our attention to the places that sustain us?
Read as a cultural and spiritual argument, considering how its ideas translate into your own place and circumstances.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Farming · Ecology · Regeneration
Call of the Reed Warbler: Revised Edition
Charles Massy
Charles Massy draws on Australian farming experience to explore regenerative agriculture. His accounts connect land management with changes in how farmers understand living systems.
A question through HSE
What becomes possible when farming decisions attend to the relationships between soil, water, plants, animals and people?
Consider the conditions behind each example. Farming outcomes depend on place, management, time and the evidence available.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Reciprocity · Plants · Relationships
Braiding Sweetgrass
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Botanist and Potawatomi writer Robin Wall Kimmerer brings plant science, Indigenous knowledge and personal reflection into conversation. Reciprocity and responsibility to the living world run through her essays.
A question through HSE
How might attention to plants and place change the responsibilities we recognise in everyday life?
Attend to the specific peoples, traditions and relationships Kimmerer writes from. Engage with her work on its own terms, alongside the questions HSE raises.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Perception · Language · Place
The Spell of the Sensuous
David Abram
David Abram explores how bodily perception and language connect people with the living world. Philosophy and encounters across cultures inform his account of human participation in a more-than-human world.
A question through HSE
How does direct sensory participation in a place influence what we notice, understand and do?
Read as a philosophical inquiry. Consider its interpretations alongside the voices of the cultures discussed and evidence relevant to particular claims.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Ecotherapy · Practice · Ecological self
Ecotherapy: A Field Guide
David Key and Keith Tudor
David Key and Keith Tudor critically review how ecotherapy is understood and practised. They explore questions about nature, therapy, culture and the ecological self, and propose a framework for bringing greater coherence to the field.
A question through HSE
How might a therapeutic practice account for the relationships between people, culture and the living places they participate in?
Read as a critical review and theoretical contribution. Consider how its proposed framework informs practice, and what evidence is needed for particular therapeutic claims.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.Awareness · Connection · Insight · Purpose
Born to Flourish
Richard J. Davidson and Cortland Dahl
Richard J. Davidson and Cortland Dahl draw on neuroscience and contemplative traditions to introduce the Healthy Minds Framework. They explore awareness, connection, insight and purpose as skills that can be cultivated in everyday life.
A question through HSE
How might attention and purpose develop through growing, making, caring and contributing within the relationships and places of everyday life?
Consider the evidence for specific practices and outcomes alongside the wider social, cultural and ecological conditions that shape opportunities to flourish.
Affiliate link · Opens Amazon in a new tab. Check the edition, format, price and delivery details there.
Human Systems Ecology
