MR. PRESIDENT, we've seen the pictures of you striding across tarmacs clutching a hardback, so we know you're a big reader, capable of ingesting everything from Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World—so strategic!—to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which revealed the greasy sheen on our agricultural system. Delicious!

How about an environmental reading list? For a city guy, you already seem to have a good handle on green issues. Your proposed energy secretary, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Chu, doesn't have to be told about solar power; you've got Carol Browner as your climate czarina and green-jobs advocate Hilda Solis for Labor; and you've had your inbox filled by every enviro group in America.

Want some more advice? I thought as much, so I checked in with some top-shelf

The experts picked enviro classics, doomsday lit, tomes on green capitalism, and deep wonk. But cover to cover? I'd hate to think of you curled up in the White House, highlighting chapters on peak oil.

people—from former president Jimmy Carter to business leaders like Doug McMillon, CEO of Wal-Mart International. Like me, they were itching to load you up with inspiration, and their picks fell into four categories: the classics, doomsday lit, natural capitalism, and deep wonk.

First, the traditionalists. They overwhelmingly picked A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold's beautiful articulation of the original land ethic, for perspective on what has been, and what might still be, lost. But as Aspen Skiing Company's Auden Schendler e-mailed me, "Walden ain't going to save us, and Obama doesn't have TIME to read that shit." So, onward.

Then there are those who want to wake you up, and fast. "The fact that the Obama camp continues to talk about 'goals' for CO2-emissions reductions and 'cap and trade' makes me wonder whether they really 'get it,'" your own NASA climatologist, James Hansen, wrote. This is a man who's been jumping up and down, trying to get presidents' attention for decades, so you'll want to download his open letter, "Tell Obama the Truth," off the Internet. Plenty of other enviros suggested climate-shock therapy. ("Get out your mukluks!" Ed Abbey's old pal Doug Peacock e-mailed about James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia, in which humanity is reduced to "a few breeding pairs" in the Arctic.) Meanwhile, plenty of business leaders suggested more hopeful books on green capitalism, written by people like Paul Hawken (The Ecology of Commerce), who, as Sun Microsystems sustainability chief David Douglas e-mailed me, get "that 'eco' = ecology AND economy."

Would it be impertinent to suggest, Mr. President—Barry?—that you'd look incredibly snappy toting a star-spangled copy of A Declaration of Energy Independence, by Jay Hakes? This is President Carter's pick for you. Never mind that Hakes runs the Carter Presidential Library; he headed the Energy Information Administration from 1993 to 2000, and his is one of three heavy-duty tomes filled with serious policy solutions. Combine it with Yale Forestry School dean James Gustave Speth's 2008 look at sustainability, The Bridge at the Edge of the World, and longtime energy guru Amory Lovins's 2005 doorstop, Winning the Oil Endgame, and you've got your own portable energy council right there.

All of these picks are more than worthy, but cover to cover? Ouch. One of your advisers, off the record, told me you prefer books that are "well-written," and I hate to think of you curled up in the presidential bedroom, highlighting chapters on peak oil. So here are the five I'd put on your nightstand.

The first volume in your Bedside Cabinet should be The Quiet Crisis and the Next Generation, by former Interior secretary Stewart Udall. Sure, the writing feels dated—it was 1963—but Udall is our wisest environmental elder, and this little-read book comes with a foreword by John F. Kennedy. "Each generation must deal anew," J.F.K. wrote, in words that still apply, "with the 'raiders,' with the scramble to use public resources for private profit, and with the tendency to prefer short-run profits to long-term necessities. The nation's battle to preserve the common estate is far from won."