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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $25.00. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

In Brenda Peterson’s unusual memoir, fundamentalism meets deep ecology. The author’s childhood in the high Sierra with her forest ranger father led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave this world. Peterson survived fierce “sword drill” competitions demanding total recall of the Scriptures and awkward dinner table questions (“Will Rapture take the cat, too?”) only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers. Peterson paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind.

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In the 1970s, Dolly Freed lived off the land dirt cheap and plum easy. Living in her own house on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia for almost five years, Dolly and her father produced their own food and drink and spent roughly $700 each per year. Thirty years later, Dolly Freed's Possum Living is as fascinating and pertinent as it was in 1978. This reissue of the survivalist classic has a foreword by David Gates and an afterword by the author.

After discussing reasons why you should or shouldn't give up your job, Possum Living gives you details about the cheapest ways with the best results to buy and maintain your home, dress well, cope with the law, stay healthy and keep up a middle-class facade — whether you live in the city, in the suburbs or in a small town. In a delightful, straightforward style, Dolly Freed explains how to be lazy, proud, miserly and honest, live well and enjoy leisure. She shares her knowledge for what you do need — your own home, for example — and what you don't need — such as doctors, lawyers and insurance. Through her own example, Dolly hopes to inspire you to do some independent thinking about how economics affects the course of your life now and may do so in the coming "age of shortages." If you ever wondered what it would be like to be in greater control of your own life, Possum Living will show you — and help you do it for yourself.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: 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 readers. For 40 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.

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There’s never been a better time to “be prepared.” Matthew Stein’s comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills — from food and water to shelter and energy to first-aid and crisis-management skills — prepares you to embark on the path toward sustainability. But, unlike any other book, Stein not only shows you how to live “green” in seemingly stable times, but to live in the face of potential disasters, lasting days or years, coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown or environmental catastrophe.

When Technology Fails covers the gamut. You’ll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you’ve been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You’ll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You’ll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity. Each chapter offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad. Chapter subjects include: a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine and healing; energy, heat and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines and materials.

Fully revised and expanded — the first edition was written pre-9/11 and pre-Katrina, when few Americans took the risk of social disruption seriously — When Technology Fails ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on "Making the Shift to Sustainability," which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community and global levels.

About the author

Matthew Stein holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He is an engineer, author and building contractor. He has also worked as a schoolteacher, carpenter, and rock-climbing and ski instructor. As the owner of Aloha Aina Builders, Stein has built hurricane-resistant, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly homes. As a mechanical engineer and president of Stein Design, he has designed consumer water-filtration devices, commercial water-filtration systems, photovoltaic roofing panels, medical bacteriological filters, drinking fountains, emergency chemical drench systems, computer disk drives, portable fiberglass buildings, and automated assembly machinery for Applied Solar, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate, Plantronics, Duraflame, Haws and IGT. He currently resides with his wife, Josie, in the High Sierra Mountains near Lake Tahoe, Calif. For many years, Stein has pursued avid interests in renewable energy, alternative healing, sustainable growth and preventative medicine.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: 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 readers. For 40 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.

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A "zero energy" home — a home that produces as much energy as it consumes — is an idea whose time has come. By reducing or eliminating utility bills, zero energy homes offer a new direction for housing in America. It is a win-win for the homeowner, for the planet and for a new generation of builders who are building houses that better meet the energy challenges ahead of us all.

With unequaled knowledge and a passion for the subject, authors David Johnston and Scott Gibson explore the design and construction of energy self-sufficient houses from start to finish and feature 12 houses that were built for zero energy living.

About the authors:

A leader in the green building movement, David Johnston is the author of Green From the Ground Up and founder of Green Building and What's Working. His approach to green building has been embraced by building professionals, municipalities, homeowners and sustainability advocates nationwide. Co-author Scott Gibson is a freelance writer and longtime contributing editor to Fine Homebuilding magazine.

Recommended Product for Wiser Living: 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 readers. For 40 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.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $14.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

In Getting a Grip 2, Frances Moore Lappé, author of the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet, speaks to everyone distressed by the state of our world. In a vibrant, intimate voice, she challenges us to re-examine outdated assumptions about who we are and how the world works. She then weaves surprising facts and stories of courage into a novel narrative of meaning and action.

Drawing on breakthroughs from neuroscience to anthropology, Lappé offers us a way of seeing possibility based not in wishful thinking but hard evidence.

Getting a Grip 2, thoroughly rewritten for this moment, shows us how reframing the very meaning of democracy, power, fear, courage and even hope itself, can free us to create the lives and the world we really want.

Lappé's startling message leaves readers feeling liberated and courageous.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $24.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

In the Age of Scarcity now upon us, fresh water shortages are an increasingly serious global problem. With water restrictions emerging in many developed countries and water diversions for industrial, urban and environmental reasons stirring up oceans of controversy, there is a growing thirst for innovative approaches to reducing our water footprint.
Dry Run shows the best ways to manage scarce water resources and handle upcoming urban water crises. Featuring original interviews with more than 25 water researchers and industry experts, this book explains water issues and proposes solutions for homes, buildings, facilities and schools. Examining the vital linkages between water, energy use, urban development and climate change, Dry Run demonstrates best practices for achieving "net zero" water use in the built environment including:

• water conservation strategies for buildings, factories, cities and homes
• rainwater harvesting
• graywater reuse and water reclamation systems
• water efficiency retrofits
• onsite sewage treatment
• new water reuse and supply technologies.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $18.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

In response to the coming impact of peak oil, John Michael Greer helps us envision the transition from an industrial society to a sustainable ecotechnic world - not returning to the past, but creating a society that supports relatively advanced technology on a sustainable resource base.
Fusing human ecology and history, this book challenges assumptions held by mainstream and alternative thinkers about the evolution of human societies. Human societies, like ecosystems, evolve in complex and unpredictable ways, making it futile to try to impose rigid ideological forms on the patterns of evolutionary change. Instead, social change must explore many pathways over which we have no control. The troubling and exhilarating prospect of an open-ended future, he proposes, requires dissensus - a deliberate acceptance of radical diversity that widens the range of potential approaches to infinity.
Written in three parts, the book places the present crisis of the industrial world in its historical and ecological context in part one; part two explores the toolkit for Ecotechnic Age, and part three opens a door to the complexity of future visions.
For anyone concerned about peak oil and the future of the industrial society, this book provides a solid analysis of how we got to where we are, and a practical toolkit to prepare for the future.

About the author
John Michael Greer is a certified Master Conserver, an organic gardener, a scholar of ecological history, an internationally renowned blogger, and an award-winning Peak Oil author. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.

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Residential consumption represents nearly one quarter of North America's total energy use, and the average homeowner spends thousands of dollars a year on power bills. To help alleviate this problem, Energy-Wise Landscape Design presents hundreds of practical ways everyone can save money, time and effort while making their landscapes more environmentally healthy, ecologically rich and energy efficient.
Combining general guidelines with tips, techniques and actions, this fully illustrated guide explains the many opportunities our landscapes provide for conserving energy. Readers will learn how to:

• lower a home's heating and cooling costs
• minimize fuel used in landscape construction, maintenance and everyday use
• choose landscape products and materials with lower embedded energy costs
• make a positive difference without a major investment or change in lifestyle.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $24.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Finding community is as critical as obtaining food and shelter, since the need to belong is what makes us human. The isolation and loneliness of modern life have led many people to search for deeper connection, which has resulted in a renewed interest in intentional communities. These intentional communities or ecovillages are an appealing choice for like-minded people who seek to create a family-oriented and ecologically sustainable lifestyle - a lifestyle they are unlikely to find anywhere else.
However, the notion of an intentional community can still be a tremendous leap for some - deterred perhaps by a misguided vision of eking out a hardscrabble existence with little reward. In fact, successful ecovillages thrive because of the combined skills and resources of their members.
Finding Community presents a thorough overview of ecovillages and intentional communities and offers solid advice on how to research thoroughly, visit thoughtfully, evaluate intelligently and join gracefully. Useful considerations include:

• important questions to ask (of members and of yourself)
• signs of a healthy (and not-so-healthy) community
• cost of joining (and staying)
• common blunders to avoid.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $27.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Recently, thousands of North American schools have begun to take a critical look at their grounds and realize the enormous potential for transforming barren expanses of asphalt into a diversity of exciting natural spaces for learning and playing.

This compendium of articles from Green Teacher, North America's leading environmental education magazine, brings together the best strategies for school-ground renewal. Greening School Grounds provides an overview of the school grounds greening movement, complete project plans, and subject integration. From vegetable and butterfly gardens to an amphibian oasis and avian attractors, this comprehensive guide offers a trove of curriculum tie-ins, activities, and plans for educators, parents, and students.