Hide An environmentally friendly sourcebook that is actually two books in one, providing everything the gardener needs to know about setting up a healthy growing environment within a sunspace, plus a complete guide to growing flowers, vegetables and herbs in the greenhouse. Highly recommended.

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Before you build your home, read this definitive guide to designing with the sun in mind by MOTHER EARTH NEWS contributing editor Dan Chiras. Learn how you can cut your energy bills in half by choosing the best passive solar heating and cooling techniques.

Passive solar heating and passive cooling — approaches known as natural conditioning — provide comfort throughout the year by reducing, or eliminating, the need for fossil fuel. Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved.

Now Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date for a new generation of solar enthusiasts.

The techniques required to heat and cool a building passively have been used for thousands of years. Early societies such as the Native American Anasazis and the ancient Greeks perfected designs that effectively exploited these natural processes. The Greeks considered anyone who didn't use passive solar to heat a home to be a barbarian!

In the United States, passive solar architecture experienced a major resurgence of interest in the 1970s in response to crippling oil embargoes. With grand enthusiasm but with scant knowledge (and sometimes little common sense), architects and builders created a wide variety of solar homes. Some worked pretty well, but looked more like laboratories than houses. Others performed poorly, overheating in the summer because of excessive or misplaced windows and skylights, and growing chilly in the colder months because of insufficient thermal mass and insulation and poor siting.

In The Solar House, Chiras sets the record straight on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, he highlights certain egregious — and entirely avoidable — errors. More importantly, Chiras explains in methodical detail how today's home builders can succeed with solar designs.

Now that energy efficiency measures including higher levels of insulation and multi-layered glazing have become standard, it is easier than ever before to create a comfortable and affordable passive solar house that will provide year-round comfort in any climate.

Moreover, since modern building materials and airtight construction methods sometimes result in air-quality and even toxicity problems, Chiras explains state-of-the-art ventilation and filtering techniques that complement the ancient solar strategies of thermal mass and daylighting. Chiras also explains the new diagnostic aids available in printed worksheet or software formats, allowing readers to generate their own design schemes.

About the Author
Daniel D. Chiras is the author of The Natural House. He holds a Ph.D. in physiology and teaches courses on sustainability and environmental health at the universities of Colorado and Denver. He is the author of five college and high school text books as well as other books on global environmental issues. Chiras is also an avid musician, organic gardener, river runner and bicyclist. He lives with his family in a passive solar/solar electric, straw bale and rammed tire house in Evergreen, Colorado.

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Readers familiar with Barbara Kingsolver will find that Small Wonder, a collection of 23 essays, shows the same sensitivity and thoughtfulness, the same rich knowledge of and love for the natural world, as her spellbinding novels. She writes about genetic engineering, gardening, motherhood and much more.

Many of these essays were written (or rewritten) in response to the events of September 11, which threw into relief the growing social and economic inequities that are so little remarked on in the American media. These are political essays, although Kingsolver is not a natural rhetorician; her prose is too supple and inclusive. She has a rare gift for apt allusion and for the elegant use of facts and figures. It is easy to imagine the speechwriters and activists of the next 10 years dipping into Small Wonder for inspiration and the perfect phrase.

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This hands-on guide for converting a gas-powered car to electric has all the information you need to choose a donor car, and successfully make the conversion. It also includes how to drive, charge and maintain your electric car.

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Step-by-step illustrated instructions, informative charts and a host of delicious recipes make this an indispensable kitchen reference. Covers freezing, canning, drying and pickling produce fresh from the market or garden.

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The essential primer for first-time farmers, each chapter spotlights a single animal. You'll learn what type of housing and how much land your animals need, what to feed them, how to breed them and how to handle routine healthcare.

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Twenty-five years ago, when author Hans Morsbach became interested in cultivating trees and managing small woodlands, he searched for a good how-to manual. He never found one, so he decided to write his own. Based on his subsequent experience, combining deep research into the academic literature on forestry with his successes and failures as a small-scale commercial tree farmer, the result is Common Sense Forestry, a MOTHER EARTH NEWS Book for Wiser Living, is an indispensable reference for anyone who owns or wants to own wooded property. Morsbach is an unabashed nature lover as well as a businessman, and well understands the essential importance of a long-term approach to sustainable forest management. In this highly readable and entertaining text, the author offers a comprehensive look at managing existing woodlands by creating, and later maintaining, forests that promote biodiversity while providing an income stream. This comprehensive examination of sustainable forestry includes everything from choosing land to beginning a forest through seeding and transplanting, from pruning and thinning to harvesting trees, from debates over herbicides and clearcutting to working with professional foresters, from business strategies to tax planning. While Morsbach's personal experience is in the Midwest, the information in this book is applicable to a wide range of trees and is relevant to all regions of North America.

About the Author:

When he's not in the woods, Hans Morsbach lives in Chicago, where he is a successful restauranteur.

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This 304 page cookbook offers 225 easy-to-make recipes. There are recipes with zucchini as the main ingredient and many illustrate ways to subtly incorporate this delectable vegetable into a dish.

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Lisa Carlson, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, has compiled this 640-page consumer's guide to making funeral arrangements — with or without a funeral director. Included is a state-by-state guide to funeral law.

Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For more than 30 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.