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The rapidly growing alternative food system is made up of people reclaiming their connections to their food and their health. A 40-year veteran of this movement, Mark Winne introduces us to innovative "local doers" leading the charge to bring nutritious, sustainable and affordable food to all. Heeding Emerson's call to embrace that great American virtue of self-reliance, these leaders in communities all across the country are defying the authority of the food conglomerates and taking matters into their own hands. They are turning urban wastelands into farms, creating local dairy collectives, preserving farmland and refusing to use genetically modified seed. They are not only bringing food education to children in elementary schools, they are also offering cooking classes to adults in diabetes-prone neighborhoods — and taking the message to college campuses as well. Such efforts promote food democracy and empower communities to create local food-policy councils, build a neighborhood grocery store in the midst of a food desert, or demand healthier school lunches for their kids. Winne's hope is that all of these programs, scaled up and adopted more widely, will ultimately allow the alternative food system to dethrone the industrial.

Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin' Mamas challenges us to go beyond eating local to become part of a larger solution, demanding a system that sustains body and soul.

About the author
For 25 years Mark Winne was the executive director of the Hartford Food System in Hartford, Conn. He speaks and consults extensively on community food-system topics and is the author of Closing the Food Gap. Winne lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

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In Losing Our Cool, scientist and environmental journalist Stan Cox shows that indoor climate control is colliding with an out-of-control outdoor climate. In America, energy consumed by home air conditioning and the resulting greenhouse emissions have doubled in just over a decade; energy used to cool retail stores has risen by two-thirds. And six out of every seven gallons of diesel fuel U.S. forces haul into Iraq and Afghanistan are used to run air conditioning.

Reporting from some of the world’s hot zones — from Arizona and Florida to India — Cox documents the surprising ways in which air conditioning changes human experience: giving a boost to the global warming that it is designed to help us endure, providing a potent commercial stimulant, making possible an impossible commuter economy, and altering migration patterns. Though it saves lives in heat waves, it may also be altering our bodies’ sensitivity to heat; our rates of infection, allergy, asthma and obesity; and even our sex drive.

About the author:
Before joining the Land Institute in Salina, Kan., as senior scientist in 2000, Cox worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture geneticist for 13 years. His environmental writing has been widely published. He is the author of Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine.

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In The New Normal, author David Wann challenges us to do some heavy lifting and transform our non-sustainable culture by transforming ourselves. For Wann, our current "old normal" lifestyle - buying water in disposable bottles, allowing the government to ignore global warming - will not preserve the planet. To nurture our world, he challenges us to rethink our lives, stand up for a healthy planet and move towards a "new normal" lifestyle in an agenda that includes:

• Initiating local business alliances that actively lobby for local buying.
• Creating an investment strategy that values the balance of nature.
• Supporting the design, manufacture, and use of products made with natural chemicals.
• Publicly advocating a more efficient use of water by placing a higher cultural value on wetlands, streams, rivers, and lakes.

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Growing a Garden City offers compelling photographs and personal narratives of community garden members, graduate students and first graders, a low-income senior and troubled teen, a foodie, a food bank officer, and many more. They describe their setbacks and successes involved with community gardening and show how to build on and emulate their achievements anywhere across the country and around the world.

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Meat is a groundbreaking exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical and social issues surrounding the human consumption of animals, and the future of livestock in sustainable agriculture. Garnering huge praise in the U.K., this book answers the question: Should we be farming animals, or not? The answer is not simple; indeed, we must decrease the amount of meat we eat (both for the planet and for ourselves), and the industrial meat system is hugely problematic. Even so, author Simon Fairlie presents in-depth research in favor of small-scale, holistic, and integrated farming systems that include pastured, free-range livestock as the answer to the pro-meat or no-meat debate. George Monbiot, for example, a well-known environmental activist and supporter of veganism, has retracted his support for veganism after reading Meat. This is a life-changing book.

The issues this book addresses — food security, first and foremost — are being undermined by entities demanding rules and regulations in food matters without enough knowledge. Meat fills these gaps, and Fairlie’s data proves the solution is neither veganism nor our current model. In fact, Fairlie, a farmer in his own right, presents an agricultural and environmental theory that takes off where other work on vegetarianism and veganism have fallen short in their global scope. His research is based in deep permacultural theory, and a respect for natural systems that flourished long before corporate agriculture and animal factory farms. Most importantly, in the end, Fairlie shows humility in the face of unanswered questions — a rare and wonderful asset that has already invited global discussion among those who might otherwise sheer away from the topic. Meat is a crucial addition to the agricultural canon.

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 and products to readers. For more than 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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We're hammered, we're slammed, we're out of control. Happiness is on the decline in the most affluent country in the world and Americans are troubled by the destructiveness of a lifestyle devoted to money and status. Yet no-one seems to have a clue how to exit from the Fast Lane.

Slow Is Beautiful analyzes the subtle consumer, political and corporate forces stamping the joy from our existence and provides a vision of a more fulfilling life through the rediscovery of caring community, unhurried leisure, and life affirming joie de vivre. The book discusses:

• the frantic time poverty plaguing everyone - a poverty that is being challenged by the growing Slow Life movement whose message is reverberating around the world
• the need to build a culture of connection with both people and the planet by challenging the consumer society and recreating vibrant life in our local communities
• the creation of a different experience of time where we live life in slower, more reflective ways, savoring our lives and recapturing exuberance and laughter.

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As mayors and city councilors seek solutions to climate change, existing policies and legislation can stand in the way of effective change.

The Carbon Charter is the first book to describe the municipal bylaws required to abate climate change and create sustainable communities. It provides city councilors with a cut-and-paste set of green bylaws and policies of best practices culled from environmentally advanced communities around the world. They can be taken straight out of the book, placed into a council agenda with minimum modification, and voted on.

The Carbon Charter provides city councilors with the ammunition they need to implement and accelerate sustainability initiatives quickly. The book describes bylaws that are applicable throughout the world, with the emphasis on examples that are beneficial to temperate climates such as the U.S. and Canada. It also proposes innovative new bylaws that are found nowhere else. This highly accessible, comprehensive handbook includes:

• Sample bylaws, case studies and background material and references
• Numbered QuickLinks that allow readers access to full bylaw texts and links
• Special icons that pinpoint target audiences, with bylaws relevant to each audience

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You don't have to journey to a rural paradise to find the farm of the future. It's your neighbor's suburban lawn, the roof of your uptown condominium, or the co-op market garden in the vacant lot down the street. Urban Agriculture is a detailed look at how food is taking root in our cities. It offers inspirational advice and working examples to help you dig in and become more self-sufficient with your own food choices.

Taking the local food movement to its next logical step, this fully-illustrated, design-rich guide presents a cornucopia of proven ideas for:

• Windowsill and balcony growing
• Edible landscaping
• Farming the commons
• Community gardening, from allotments to orchards
• Taking urban agriculture to the next level with creative spaces, bigger lots and higher yields.

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For a growing number of people, simplicity has been a path to experience the joy in life, to cherish its richness and vitality. It strips away the burdens of our daily lives so that we are left with exhilaration, spirit and fullness. These people are finding that less -- less work, less rushing, less debt -- is more -- more time with family and friends, more time with community, more time with nature, and more time to develop a meaningful and compelling spirituality.

In The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life, author Cecile Andrews helps you discover and create the good life for yourself. She is renowned for her workshops on voluntary simplicity and her seminars on creating simplicity circles, where people explore their own life stories and share information and knowledge, helping one another develop lives of simplicity and satisfaction. The circles do not only give people the tools to change, but they also fill unmet needs for community and intimacy and the desire to search for truth in the company of kindred spirits.

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A man's home is his castle. But demographic and economic changes have turned our castles into islands. How can we regain the elements of the traditional village – family, cooperation, community and a sense of belonging – within the context of 21st century life?

Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities is an in-depth exploration of a uniquely rewarding type of housing which is perfect for anyone who values their independence but longs for more connection with those around them. Written by the award-winning team that wrote the original "cohousing bible" and first brought cohousing to North America, this fully-illustrated manual combines nuts-and-bolts practical considerations and design ideas with extensive case studies of dozens of diverse communities in Europe and North America.

Cohousing communities create unique opportunities for designing more sustainable lifestyles. Whether urban, suburban or rural; senior or intergenerational; retrofit or new, the authors show how the physical structures of cohousing communities lend themselves to a more efficient use of resources, and make everything from gardening to childcare to socializing easier.

Creating Cohousing puts the "neighbor" back into "neighborhood;" and is an essential resource for anyone interested in more environmentally and socially sustainable living.