I say it every year: whether on the beach, in a hammock, or sitting on your deck, the cheapest way to exit the Whistler bubble is through a book. Not only can you rapidly escape to myriad elsewheres, but, more importantly than ever, also return better-informed about the world and our place in it. In that vein, I share a few worthy non-fiction titles:
Blind Drunk: A Sober Look at Our Boozy Culture, by Veronica Woodruff, Tide Water Press 2025
Almost all of us grow up alcohol-adjacent, whether through family, friends, activities or tacit societal approval. How we choose to manage that relationship can define us. Debut Pemberton author Veronica Woodruff not only grew up surrounded by alcohol’s institutional and cultural green-lights, but in the belly of that beast’s ultimate pathology—from which she repeatedly tried to escape. From her parents’ de facto alcoholism through her own peer-approved initiation, casual use, occasional misuse, and late flirtation with dependency, Woodruff’s engaging recollections of a life spent running from alcohol’s ravages on her family while simultaneously entertaining its charms and ubiquity—particularly in the Whistler outdoor vortex—is a page-turning roadmap of reexamination, research and ultimate chosen sobriety that will make anyone look more closely at why and how they drink.
Insectopolis: A Natural History, by Peter Kuper, Norton, 2025
A woman is taking her visiting brother to check out an exhibition on insects at the New York Public Library. Suddenly, an unrevealed event occurs that wipes out all humans and, as the great naturalist E. O. Wilson once predicted, sees the world revert to the rich state of biological equilibrium that existed before we messed it up—including myriad insects who now step in to tour the reader through their wide-ranging academic study and 400-million-year evolutionary history. This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction by award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper dives into a world where ants, bees and butterflies investigate humanity’s longstanding connections to them. A visual feast that layers history and science, colour and design, Kuper tells the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies, and mosquitoes changing the course of human history. Kuper also illuminates pioneering naturalists—from well-known figures like Wilson and Rachel Carson, to unheralded luminaries like Black American scholar Charles Henry Turner, who documented arthropod intelligence, and 17th-century German savant Maria Sybilla Merian, the mother of entomology. Galvanized by the ongoing insect crisis and broader global Sixth Extinction, Kuper leads us on a journey into a world of far more import than we imagine.
Tequila Wars: José Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico, by Ted Genoways, Norton 2025
True story: before there were Mexican drug cartels there was a tequila cartel, a union of the most important distillers in the famous Tequila Valley who, when it suited, suspended the precepts of normal competition to stand united in the face of challenges that included capricious government edicts, American temperance and the varied political unravellings and guerilla threats of the Mexican revolution. The almost unfathomable violence of the latter is telling historical context to many of the intimidation tactics of today’s bloody-minded cartels. Before the revolution, of course, Cuervo’s acclaim had spread worldwide, and once war broke out he remained an impresario, kingmaker and cultural force—ultimately forced into a shadowy existence on the run from Pancho Villa’s death threats. Despite action aplenty, this deeply researched and reported dual biography of Cuervo and the tequila industry will appeal less to those who casually enjoy the occasional margarita than dedicated history buffs who prefer their details detailed.
The Burning Earth: A History, by Sunil Amrith, Norton 2024
What has been the true planetary cost of humanity’s extraordinary expansion of freedom and mobility? Sunil Amrith, professor of both history and environment at Yale University, plumbs this question with sweeping stories that pair environment and empire, genocide and ecocide. Human prowess in agriculture and the control of nature have allowed billions of us to exist and thrive despite the true gestalt of these achievements, as one reviewer notes, being “a devastating panorama of human folly.” I prefer to see Amrith’s poetic meditation more as a guide on how to avoid the dark paths history has already trodden (albeit The Burning Earth was penned before the likes of Trump and modern neo-fascist conservatism began doubling down on humanity’s worst mistakes). Nevertheless, Amrith prefers to look to the light: “more people are challenging the self-destructive folly that captured the imagination of the powerful and privileged for two-hundred years, and which maintains a chokehold on our collective right to breathe—the idea that human ambition could simply disregard the health of rivers, the viability of forests, and the suffering of animals.”
Is a River Alive?, by Robert Macfarlane, Norton 2025
Speaking of rivers, how about a book that everyone in the literary non-fiction world is talking about this spring? Well, it should also be the book that you’re talking about. For fans, it’s everything you expect from Macfarlane, a writer internationally renowned for his dazzling prose on nature, people and places. For newbies, his latest addition to a canon that includes Underland, The Old Ways and Mountains of the Mind will doubtless draw you to the fold of the former. Marrying three extraordinary journeys—the cloud forests of Ecuador, the wounded creeks of India, and the wild but compromised rivers of Canada—to meditations on the fragile chalk stream near his own home, Macfarlane challenges perspectives while transforming how we look at the natural world. After reading this, should someone pose the title’s question in conversation, you’ll undoubtedly have an answer.
Leslie Anthony is a biologist, writer and author of several popular books on environmental science.
