Alumni of the University of Cambridge’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL) have compiled a list of the top 50 books on sustainability.

The group, which consisted of over 2000 senior leaders from around the world who have participated in the University’s sustainability programmes over the past decade, were asked to name their favourite sustainability book. Results were then compiled to create a shortlist.

The project, overseen by Wayne Visser, Senior Associate at CPSL and the founder and director of the sustainability think-tank CSR International, has been published in a pamphlet in its own right, called simply “The Top 50 Sustainable Books.”

The pamphlet has been described by Greenleaf Publishing as, “A distillation of leading thought on the environmental and social problems of our age.” More than just a list, the pamphlet also includes updates on several of the major texts, and interviews with the authors, giving fresh relevance and insight to old classics.

Titles on the list include such influential texts as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in addition to more modern works such as Nicholas Stern’s The Economics of Climate Change and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

Carson’s book was instrumental in generating public concern over the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the 1970s, while Schlosser’s book exposed the workings of the US fast food industry, giving, among other things, detailed descriptions of working conditions inside the typical slaughterhouse.

In addition to books on climate change and industry, the list also includes books on other challenges such as globalisation, with such titles as Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz and No Logo by Naomi Klein. Global poverty is another topic covered, with books such as C.K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom.