Bruce Anderson: Author of The Solar Home Book

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In 1974, the prestigious research firm of Arthur D. Little, Inc. hired a young MIT graduate in architecture to write a definitive, full-length handbook on solar building design. And that graduate — Bruce N. Anderson — labored for a year to produce a manuscript consisting of 800 typed pages and 500 illustrations. One week after the work was handed in, however, Arthur D. Little closed down its publishing operation . . . and Bruce Anderson was left without a sponsor.

Fortunately for the whole solar energy movement, the mere cop—out of his original publisher did not keep Anderson from going ahead and doing something worthwhile with his manuscript. In the fall of 1975, in fact—backed by two friends (Richard Katzenberg and Michael Riordan)—Bruce Anderson self—published the mountain of material he'd assembled under the revised title of The Solar Home Book.

Almost the instant it came off the press, The Solar Home Book was a success. "Before you build or buy a new house, you should read this book," Wilson Clark (a noted environmentalist) wrote in a review. Popular Science and The New York Times heralded Anderson's treatise as "the best book yet on solar". Even the staid Library Journal rated Bruce's effort "among the best of the new books on solar energy as a viable alternative energy source for homeowners".

By publishing-industry standards, The Solar Home Book—which has now sold in excess of 125,000 copies at $7.50 each—is a spectacular achievement. By anyone's standards, it is an important book.

No less spectacular or important than Bruce Anderson's original publishing success, however, is the success he has met while promoting solar energy via other means. In 1974, for example, Bruce founded his own architectural design and consulting firm: Total Environmental Action, Inc. Since then, TEA (which now employs 30 people) has grown to become a several—hundred—thousand—dollar—a—year business made up of a solar bookshop, a publishing arm, and a non—profit foundation.

As if that weren't enough evidence of Anderson's interest in sunshine power, Bruce somehow found time in his schedule — in 1976-to help found Solar Age . . . the official magazine of the American Section of the International Solar Energy Society. (During the two short years of its existence, Solar Age has already grown from a few hundred loyal subscribers to a paid circulation of more than 12,000 . . . and the subscriber list continues to mushroom at a rate of 1, 000 new names per month.)

And then, in August of 1977 — just to keep his hand in, so to speak — Bruce acted as the guiding force behind the publication of the widely acclaimed Solar Age Catalog (a book which only made it onto The Washington Post's best-seller list within a few weeks of its release).

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