New books ask how we can protect threatened land in the Amazon rainforest and Hawaii

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Two new books ask how we might protect vulnerable ecosystems in the Amazon rainforest and Hawaii. First, journalist Dom Phillips was reporting in the Amazon when he and a colleague were shot and killed. Phillips was in the middle of writing a book – and now, that project, How to Save the Amazon, has been completed by his widow and a team of contributors. In today's episode, Alessandra Sampaio, Phillip's widow, and co-author Jonathan Watts join NPR's Ari Shapiro to discuss the challenges they faced in completing the book. Then, Sara Kehaulani Goo's new book, Kuleana, chronicles her family's effort to hold onto ancestral land in Hawaii. In today's episode, she speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about her own complex relationship with Hawaii and what tourists might consider before they visit.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day.
0:03.6	I'm Andrew Limbong.
0:06.1	Here's a simple premise for a book.
0:07.6	A reporter goes somewhere, learn something, and comes back to write about it.
0:12.2	But it's never that simple, is it?
0:14.3	Today we've got two deeply reported books that take you to unexpected places.
0:19.4	Up ahead, a reporter comes to terms with what her ancestral land in
0:22.9	Hawaii means to her. But first, Dom Phillips was a journalist, and he was reporting in the
0:28.6	Amazon rainforest when he was killed. He was working on a book titled How to Save the Amazon,
0:34.3	which is out now, thanks to his widow, Alessandra Sampayo, who rallied together a
0:39.3	crew of contributors, including journalist John Watts, to continue reporting and finish the book.
0:45.7	Today on the pod, Watts and Sampayo talked to NPR's R. Shapiro about what it meant to keep
0:50.8	Dom Phillips's work alive and how one of the biggest hurdles was actually
0:56.1	Phillips' handwriting.
0:57.5	That's ahead.
0:59.1	The journalist Dom Phillips was deep in a part of the Amazon rainforest known as the Javari Valley,
1:06.5	halfway through writing his book about the Amazon, when he and his colleague Bruno Pereira were shot and killed, allegedly by men involved in an illegal fishing operation.
1:18.4	Dom's widow, Alessandra Sampayo, told me she knew almost immediately that his unfinished book had to be completed.
1:26.2	After the funeral, it was so intense.
1:31.0	And I think that my way to keep going, to keep alive, actually, it was finished this book.
1:39.3	That effort took three years.
1:41.2	It involved a team of co-writers and editors, and now the book is out,
	...

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