Jeff Goodell

Jeff Goodell is an American journalist and nonfiction writer who has reported on climate change for more than two decades. A longtime contributor to Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned an MFA from Columbia University.

His books combine field reporting, scientific explanation and encounters with people living through environmental change. Big Coal examines the American coal industry; How to Cool the Planet considers geoengineering; and The Water Will Come follows rising seas from threatened island communities to major coastal cities. His work keeps returning to a practical question: what does climate change look and feel like on the ground?

Goodell received a Guggenheim Fellowship in General Nonfiction in 2020. The Water Will Come was selected as a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. His later book, The Heat Will Kill You First, traces the effects of extreme heat on human bodies, ecosystems and cities, and became a New York Times bestseller.

For a first book, choose The Water Will Come. Its journeys across twelve countries make sea-level rise concrete, while its attention to engineering, politics and retreat shows why the crisis cannot be reduced to a single flooded shoreline. Readers drawn to its mixture of science and firsthand reporting can continue with The Heat Will Kill You First.