I Eat the Stars

What the hell is happening to our world? The wonderful Sarah Wilson writes straight to the beating heart of what we all need to hear. This loving and uplifting book is the wise guide that can hold our hands as we tread these dark times.
When it comes to analysing all the many things going wrong in our world, Sarah Wilson has few rivals. Her latest book sets them out with brutal clarity and whilst she does not offer policy solutions the analysis itself is an important contribution to the current debate. We need more people like Sarah alerting the world to its painful realities if change and improvement are to come.
A chilling and important book about the chaos and complexity of what's happening in the world - and how to understand it at a human level.
As an author of academic studies of collapse and sustainability, I was unfamiliar with Sarah Wilson's style. Yet as I read chapter after chapter I realized that Sarah Wilson understands it all - every aspect of our species, our societies and our inclinations that make us vulnerable to collapse. I have met no one else with such knowledge and insight. Whatever your taste in reading, if you are concerned about our future, take this book seriously.
Praising Sarah sufficiently is a prodigious task. Her range, her freedom of spirit, her brilliance, her unflinching honesty... I Eat the Stars is a fiesty, outspoken testament that devours wobbly beliefs and half-lived lies. Sarah is not here to soothe. Her writing agitates; it awakens our exasperation, but also our compassion. It is unlike any book you have ever read. Be warned: you may never see the world again as you do now.
Sarah has taken material that I am deeply familiar with in my own work and made it come alive in compelling and captivating ways. I love her memorable prose. I love the non-linear romp through facts and emotions. I love her presence that included me. This is a long, hard road we're on and I am glad for her companionship on the journey.
It is difficult to provide philosophical guidance through rupture while it is still tearing the fabric of the world apart. But this is what Sarah Wilson manages to do, with exactly the kind of tenderness and wild-spiritedness that we are going to need - and want - going forward.
Sarah Wilson uses her legacy to name what is now looking us squarely in the eye. She does the unglamorous, often unpopular work for us - and we should be paying attention to what she has to say.
Having abandoned hope in favour of radical acceptance, Sarah Wilson confronts what she foresees as the inevitable collapse of the world as we know it. In doing so, Sarah has embraced the 'sacred pain' of compassion for all who suffer in this failing world. She acknowledges that while this pending collapse is the product of humanity's choices - there is no virtue in ascribing blame for flaws that lie at the core of human being. So, what is to be done? Sarah Wilson has a prescription for the ages: embrace the truth; value what has intrinsic worth ... and dance with the joy of those who live deeply and love with abandon ... every day.
Sarah Wilson says out loud what most of us don't want to hear. We are afraid she might be right. But read this book - when you are ready - because it may profoundly change the way you think about the future and how you live your life.
Sarah is an insightful and fiercely intelligent leader. She gently builds community without fanfare. In this book, she dares us to be curious and courageous. She writes what I cannot bring myself to say and gives me permission to be scared. The truth might indeed be more important than hope. Sarah puts into words so many thoughts I'm having myself that have numbed me. Her writing encourages me to be curious and brave about every new day as an act of service. Truth might indeed be more important than hope.
I Eat the Stars is a personal but information-and-thought-packed account of a vividly intelligent, profoundly concerned mind grappling with the threats and challenges of our increasingly chaotic world. Boldly and passionately confronting what is happening, Sarah Wilson seeks to make sense, to identify solutions, to question, to call out those who are harming the world, on a vigorous crusade to save the future. This is a clarion of a book; hers is a soaring voice, which speaks with incisive clarity on behalf of the fears and hopes of many; and in doing so shows where hope is still to be found.
Somehow Sarah finds all the things to say about where we are as a collective. Our efforts, our awareness, wanting to stand on the right side of it all. This is such a beautiful read, our 'humanness', the imbalance and injustice that tips into darkness at the hands of fools. This book feels like a friend, a raw conversation about the state of emergency. Alarming and still a hand of peace on your shoulder. There are people I do not want to ever leave this planet. If we can keep Sarah Wilson and David Attenborough forever... there will always be two beacons of hope when hope seems so hard to keep hold of.
A book for dark times that is filled with light and hope. Thoughtful, sometimes unsettling but always brave.
A fascinating and jolting work - part scholarship, part memoir - searing in its honesty.
This is not just about the climate, but civilisation buckling under the weight of its own complexity. Given worsening inequality, political polarisation, falling fertility, resource shortages and global conflicts, Wilson argues that we are hurtling towards the same end as ancient Rome, the Mayan civilisation and every other sophisticated society before us. Wilson, an Australian journalist, has often been ahead of the curve, writing bestselling books about quitting sugar, anxiety and the climate crisis before those topics were mainstream... It is an intensely sobering read, seeming to confirm all our worst fears about the future. But it also delivers clarity. Yes, things are that bad, but there is still plenty to fight for and much we can shape - if we are willing to confront reality.
Honest, helpful, and paradoxically uplifting. Personally, I am done with "hopium" - hope without action turns out to be complicity.
Uncompromisingly honest and filled with razor-sharp insights, this is difficult to forget. * Publisher's Weekly, 20 Best Books of 2026 *