Reading has its own geography. I read this book The Nature of the State while I traveled back and forth from the West Highlands of Scotland to London for work . . . while Israeli-Palestinian relations erupted into open conflict in Gaza, while fire in Greece turned to fire Australia, while it snowed hard in […]
“The more we leave the non-human world behind, the less human we become: and the more fearful we become. It is not the thrilling fear of the kind I have experienced with horses, it is more a soul-deep, dislocated sense of anxiety. We lose our sense of trust in the wild world: we begin to […]
Carbon emissions from the building environment are globally one of the major contributors to climate change. On average up to 50% of all carbon emissions are related to domestic use of energy – our household consumption. How then will our personal conduct have any influence on the global climate? The answer to that is it […]
I am really not the right person to be reviewing “Nature’s Due” by Professor Brian Goodwin from Shumacher College in the UK. It is based on some quite complicated biology, a subject that I haven’t studied formally since I was 14. James sent me the book in September, and I’ve only just finished it now, […]
Why did I reread passages of this book over and over, why did scenes haunt me for weeks? The struggle for survival is boiled down, elemental: two humans, trying to find enough food for surviving another day, trying to avoid becoming food for the human beasts.
Special guest desert dwelling activist and academic Lucy Michaels, gets to the heart of the matter with a classic eco text: “The burnt cliffs and lonely skies … all that which lies beyond the end of roads:” From Desert Solitaire and why Israel’s deserts need their own Edward Abbey. In the late 1950’s, a young […]
With winter upon us, now is the perfect time to get cozy with a pile of books. The latest in our eco-reads book review series is a great food and cooking reference – the Whole Foods Companion. Whole Foods Companion is a dip-your-toe-in book rather than a cover-to-cover book: it’s great for delving into when […]
Vandana Shiva isn’t a writer to pull punches. By the twelfth page of 'Stolen Harvest' (2000), she announces a damning verdict on Western food production:
“My story gathering has led me all over the world. Each journey took me to a perfect example of one facet of the problem or one hint of a solution. I was near the end before I realised that I had looked for my answers on several of the world’s most forgotten islands, self-contained places […]
Slow Food has been garnering lots of attention lately, with an international convention in San Francisco in September and another in Italy just this week. It seems like the perfect time to pull out the Slow Food anthology, this week’s entry in our eco-reads review series. ‘Slow Food’ is one of those elusive yet still […]
Today’s book review, part of our ‘eco books review festival’, is by guest writer Gil Peled: Jerusalem-based Israeli eco-architect Gil (who trained in architecture in the wilds of deepest Scotland…), has been involved in planning and designing on the green scene in Israel for many years. His ongoing project is coordinating a Jerusalem apartment building […]
Freelance writer James Glave has successfully turned the planning and construction of a shed on his property in British Columbia into a thriving trade. His book, “Almost Green,” his own blog site devoted to the book and his promotional activities selling it, coupled with the Facebook group and the website devoted to renting out the […]
For those readers about to participate in tonight’s Yom Kippur fast, Green Prophet Daniella Cheslow offers up many reasons why we need to think again about food production in this weeks ‘eco-reads’ review: Paul Roberts may be the only food writer capable of swinging from prehistoric man gathering berries to a doomsday scenario ten years […]
Earth Future is a collection of very worthy short stories. It is immediately clear that Guy Dauncey is not writing from a literary and imaginative viewpoint: he is really telling us stories about how the world could be, using some real social tools and shifts, and in one or 2 stories, how bad the world […]
Guest reviewer Jeremy Zauder relishes two views of ethical development in a special double review this week: part of our ongoing Green Prophet ‘Eco-Reads’ green book summer festival: ‘Spiritual Compass’ and ‘Free To Be Human’: Reading these two fine books in succession, I found that they could be companion texts: though different in style and […]