Looking for some good reads about the environment and the Middle East? Then click yourself into the University of California Press (UCP) e-books collection (link here) offering free access to hundreds of books published by UCP and other academic presses.
Want to get close to Iraqi food traditions and culture? This cook book is for you. Lyrical memoirs of Nawal Nasrallah’s childhood in Iraq, and the place that food had in that culture, drift through the pages, pausing for sidebars that offer tidbits like four paragraphs on ancient wives in ancient kitchens. Or samples from a […]
We’ve posted about the Cafe Clock blog here, including the recipe for its famous camel burger. In this delightful cookbook, Stevens includes recipes from the Cafe Clock as well as some traditional Moroccan dishes that she discovered herself. Her warm, frank tone and the stories that introduce many of the recipes almost bring the reader […]
Working in Qatar has clearly given the academic Mari Luomi access to lots of information about the climate change rhetoric and reality of the Gulf. It also puts her in a rather awkward position in terms of being able to voice her criticism. After interviewing Luomi for Green Prophet around a year ago, however, I […]
In the book “Racing Alone”, Nader Khalili pursues his own revolution using fire, earth, air and water. In “Racing Alone”, the late Iranian earth architect Nader Khalili who died in 2008 recounts the years leading to the realization of his dream; building a dwelling that infuses Persian culture, history, art, and ingeniousness, and a structure […]
If you’re looking for some light reading from the Middle East, something peppered with the region’s wit and satire, then look no farther than Abu Dhabi and Sultan Saeed al Darmaki, presently a businessman running the construction-based Al Darmaki group. He has published his first official book, entitled Leave the Birds Alone. It was a […]
Faith is something which the Middle East has a lot of. Whether that faith is being used solely for good is another matter altogether – some are trying to change that by invoking the shared green aspects of the Abrahamic faiths Sharing Eden – Green teachings from Jews, Christians and Muslims is a small book […]
Autism is one of those worries that all new parents have to deal with at some point in the early years. The rise in diagnosed cases of over the past few years has been alarming to say the least. The search for answers as to what could be the possible cause or trigger has been […]
Dirty, polluted, and badly managed: Understanding Cairo, The Logic of a City Out of Control goes beyond the usual rhetoric “The Egyptian middle classes and intelligentsia, as well as a sizable slice of the foreign community, love to deplore what Cairo has become. Crowds and congestion, pollution, garbage, chaos, gridlocked traffic, horrendous architecture, and no […]
Four years ago when I started Green Prophet I wanted a space to share the good green news from the Middle East – news that usually gets lost in conflict or context. Today our news team have inspired change makers to connect with each other to start new green initiatives. We have covered everything sustainable […]
Pauline Masurel reviews a collection of literary and science fiction stories by world renowned authors that imagine the affects of climate change. Bill McKibben was arrested in August this year while protesting against TransCanada’s proposed plans to build a pipeline that would carry oil from the Alberta tar sands to Texas. McKibben has written: “This […]
Green Prophet’s interview with “locavore” author Leda Meredith reveals a wealth of ways that eating locally-grown foods helps to green the planet. We do what we can to reduce overall energy consumption, dutifully turning the faucet off while we scrub the dishes, turning lights off in empty rooms, hauling bottles and old newspapers to the […]
Interested in finding out about one man and his family taking on the challenge of living ethically for a year? Want to know more about the dilemmas of consuming without harming animals, people or the environment? This is the book for you. Like another of Leo Hickman’s books we’ve reviewed – ‘The Final Call’ – this book […]
Deep Economy is probably the first economics book you’ll read that advocates for less economic growth. The book is framed around a simple, yet zealous premise – that what we need is Better rather than More. Author Bill McKibben believes, as do a growing number of economists, that we indeed have to choose between one […]
If you like to beguile the slow, hot summer hours with a good food book, you will love this one. Author Peter Mayle, famous for his series of books on life in Provence as a British ex-pat, traveled left Provence to get a better taste of food festivals in other regions. He sat down at […]
I have quite a taste for post-apocalyptical fantasies myself (such as Cormac McCarthy’s chilling ‘The Road’, reviewed here earlier on GP), so I picked up ‘Everyone Can Be A Hero’ with some eagerness. It is a novel for teenagers set in a Britain devastated by a nuclear accident, where the remaining population is forced to […]
All the uses of pig. From Christein Meindertsma’s book PIG 05049. Vegetarians, vegans, and those Muslims who keep halal or Jews who keep kosher – do you think you’re avoiding pig products simply by not putting them on your plate or in your mouth? Reader discretion advised: you may be in for a rude awakening.
I find it fitting and perhaps a little ironic that I was asked to write a review about Adam Werbach’s popular book, Strategy for Sustainability, a book addressed to corporations large and small about how they can operate as leaders in sustainability. Perhaps because my senior thesis as an undergraduate English major, was entitled “The […]
The Middle East is conservative. But could increased “polyamory” open people up to practices that could save the environment? At first glance, sex and the environment don’t make obvious bedfellows. How can the answer to our environmental problems – global warming, access to fresh water, ecological sustainability, and the use of fossil fuels – possibly […]
Of the many non-fiction, environmentally-themed books I’ve read over the past few years, those that stand out are Alanna Mitchell’s ‘Dancing at the Dead Sea’ and ‘Seasick‘, both of which I have reviewed for Green Prophet. Mitchell is an acclaimed Canadian writer, skilled in her clear evocation of the destruction of the environment she witnesses […]
Good news for all our readers out there who have (paper and ink and fossil fuel saving) Kindle Wireless Reading Devices: now you can get your Green Prophet news downloaded straight to your Kindle! The Kindle is Amazon.com’s lightweight, portable electronic reader that can hold as many as 1,500 books (eliminating the need for these […]
Bradley Winterton, writing in the Taipei Times in Taiwan, recently gave big thumbs up to one of the first climate chaos novels to come out of Britain, Finitude, penned by a Canadian expat in Edinburgh named Hamish MacDonald. While the novel takes place in an un-named country in the far distant future, it’s a book […]
Hot, Flat and Crowded shows people how to embrace clean energy and green technology industries. The Genus of Genius: Someone once told me that there are three types of genius in the world. The first type of genius flows from those among us that birth brilliant and original ideas. The second type of genius belongs […]
Recycling uses up the planet’s resources. You can do better than to recycle: consume less to begin with. That’s the premise of this short book by British self-sufficiency expert Paul Peacock, who has written 14 books on topics ranging from seasonal cooking to keeping poultry for town dwellers. Peacock dips into the question of what […]
The book was sold-out even before its official release on November 4, says Saul Singer, author and columnist from Jerusalem. Singer co-wrote Start-Up Nation with Dan Senor, a prominent news analyst and businessman from New York. The two take a look at Israel’s trillion dollar high-tech industry and the nation’s improbable success – against all odds. […]
