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Based on the experiences of founders of intentional communities, this inspiring book is filled with practical information, vivid anecdotes, success stories and samples of documents from ecovillages and other established communities, including vision statements and member agreements.

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Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. With the brilliant Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked — how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things — unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green.

This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.

In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time — nation-building in America — by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation’s greatest natural resources.

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Green, Inc. is by a veteran journalist and former member of the global communications division of Conservation International. It is a first-person account of an eco warrior’s travails at the crossroads of the nonprofit and corporate worlds. MacDonald arrives at one of the world’s largest environmental groups with no small dose of idealism.

She is ready to dedicate herself to the fight for the planet’s remaining forestlands and endangered species. Quickly, however, she grows disillusioned by the group’s questionable liaisons with environmentally hostile corporations; the six-figure salaries of its leaders; and the lack of environmental ethos exhibited by her colleagues at their stylish Washington offices.

The book takes a hard look at corporate liaisons and examines the truth to claims that the country’s most prominent environmental groups have allowed themselves to be silenced by corporate money. While working inside one of the largest conservation groups in the world, the author noticed too often its sophisticated public relations machine focused on touting the virtues of corporate sponsors, spinning unrelentingly upbeat stories that distracted the public from looming environmental crisis. The book provides frank talk about allegations of “greenwashing.” The author has interviewed conservationists from the United States and several other countries, who express their concerns about the celebrity lifestyles and decision making by elite conservationists and corporate leaders.

But it not only focuses on the failures. The book also examines environmental-corporate partnerships that are bearing fruit, and reforms that could nurture a truly sustainable capitalism based on the premise that protecting natural resources can be good for both the environment and the profit margin.

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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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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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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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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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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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In recent years, unchecked growth has brought us to the brink of economic and environmental collapse. Life, Money and Illusion was inspired by the dilemma of having an economic structure that has to grow to remain healthy, while facing the finite limits of our planet. This revised and updated edition launches a review of economic expansion. It examines how growth came to be a goal and how that goal, though once beneficial, is now the propellant for catastrophe. Then, by showing how the economy can be restructured to remain within planetary limits, it points the way to a sustainable future.

Life, Money and Illusion advocates change by shifting the dominant economic paradigm from growth to sustainability. Techniques include:

• Measuring progress with social and environmental indicators, along with economic ones
• Encouraging investment in community
• Practical changes such as full cost accounting, tax shifting and monetary reform
• Honoring the Golden Rule instead of the Rule of Gold
• Focusing more on living than on stuff.

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Bigger has turned out not to be better. Servicing the global economy has exacted a heavy toll in the erosion of our communities and the destruction of our environment. Increasingly, we are coming to realize that the way forward looks a lot like the way back — back to strong local economies, back to resilient, tight-knit communities, back to the land and work that is real.

As we chart our course through these uncertain times, we are hungry for inspiration. Robert Swann was a self-taught economist, a tireless champion of decentralism, and the father of the relocalization movement. A conscientious war resistor imprisoned for his beliefs, Swann engaged in lifelong nonviolent direct action against war, racism and economic inequity. His legacy is a vision of a life-affirming, alternative economy of peace founded on innovations in land and monetary reform.

Swann's story is also the untold history of decentralism in the United States. He associated with a constellation of vital, intelligent independent authors and activists, and ultimately co-founded the Schumacher Society based on the philosophies of Small Is Beautiful author E. F. Schumacher.

Swann forged tools to build productive, resilient local and regional economies. Now as global industrial civilization flails in the throes of ecological and economic crisis, Swann's working innovations are at the ready to help neighborhoods, local entrepreneurs, and willing communities to rebuild at appropriate scales.