The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience

Permaculture is more than just the latest buzzword; it offers positive solutions for many of the environmental and social challenges confronting us. And nowhere are those remedies more needed and desired than in our cities. The Permaculture City provides a new way of thinking about urban living, with practical examples for creating abundant food, energy security, close-knit communities, local and meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable policies in our cities and towns. The same nature-based approach that works so beautifully for growing food connecting the pieces of the landscape together in harmonious ways applies perfectly to many of our other needs. Toby Hemenway, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of permaculture design, illuminates a new way forward through examples of edge-pushing innovations, along with a deeply holistic conceptual framework for our cities, towns, and suburbs. The Permaculture City begins in the garden but takes what we have learned there and applies it to a much broader range of human experience; we re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures. Hemenway lays out how permaculture design can help towndwellers solve the challenges of meeting our needs for food, water, shelter, energy, community, and livelihood in sustainable, resilient ways. Readers will find new information on designing the urban home garden and strategies for gardening in community, rethinking our water and energy systems, learning the difference between a job and a livelihood , and the importance of placemaking and an empowered community. This important book documents the rise of a new sophistication, depth, and diversity in the approaches and thinking of permaculture designers and practitioners. Understanding nature can do more than improve how we grow, make, or consume things; it can also teach us how to cooperate, make decisions, and arrive at good solutions. "

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Permaculture-City-Regenerative-Suburban-Resilience/dp/1603585265

While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities, their often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces their effectiveness as they are at the mercy of more powerful generators of urban form. In response to this paradox, Designing Urban Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful question, "What can urbanism be?" by arguing that the most significant transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices, and outcomes.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Urban-Transformation-Aseem-Inam/dp/0415837707

Are there practical solutions to the many global challenges—climate change, poverty, insufficient healthcare—that threaten our way of life? Author John Thackara has spent a lifetime roving the globe in search of design that serves human needs. In this clear-eyed but ultimately optimistic book, he argues that, in our eagerness to find big technological solutions, we have all too often ignored the astonishing creativity generated when people work together and in harmony with the world around them. Drawing on an inspiring range of examples, from a temple-led water management system in Bali that dates back hundreds of years to an innovative e-bike collective in Vienna, Thackara shows that below the radar of the mainstream media there are global communities creating a replacement economy—one that nurtures the earth and its inhabitants rather than jeopardizing its future—from the ground up. Each chapter is devoted to a concern all humans share—land and water management, housing, what we eat, what we wear, our health, how and why we travel—and demonstrates that it is possible to live a rich and fulfilling life based on stewardship rather than exploitation of the natural environment.

https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/how-to-thrive-in-the-next-economy-designing-tomorrows-world-today-hardcover

Design for the Real World has been translated into twenty-three languages since it first appeared in 1971; it has become the world's most widely read book on design and is a required text in many design and architectural schools. This second edition offers a blueprint for survival in the third millennium. Victor Papanek's lively and instructive guide shows how design can reduce pollution, overcrowding, starvation, obsolescence and other modern ills.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Real-World-Ecology-Social/dp/0500273588

In Biomimicry, Janine names an emerging discipline that emulates nature’s designs and processes (e.g., solar cells that mimic leaves) to create a healthier, more sustainable planet. Since the book’s 1997 release, Janine has evolved the practice of biomimicry, speaking around the world about what we can learn from the genius that surrounds us.

https://biomimicry.org/janine-benyus/

Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

In Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the celebrated innovation and design firm, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Change_by_Design.html?id=x7PjWyVUoVAC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

It is clear that the climate is changing and ecosystems are becoming severely degraded. Humans must mitigate the causes of, and adapt to, climate change and the loss of biodiversity, as the impacts of these changes become more apparent and demand urgent responses. These pressures, combined with rapid global urbanisation and population growth mean that new ways of designing, retrofitting and living in cities are critically needed. Incorporating an understanding of how the living world works and what ecosystems do into architectural and urban design is a step towards the creation and evolution of cities that are radically more sustainable and potentially regenerative. Can cities produce their own food, energy, and water? Can they be designed to regulate climate, provide habitat, cycle nutrients, and purify water, air and soil? This book examines and defines the field of biomimicry for sustainable built environment design and goes on to translate ecological knowledge into practical methodologies for architectural and urban design that can proactively respond to climate change and biodiversity loss. These methods are tested and exemplified through a series of case studies of existing cities in a variety of climates. Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry will be of great interest to students, professionals and researchers of architecture, urban design, ecology, and environmental studies, as well as those interested in the interdisciplinary study of sustainability, ecology and urbanism.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Regenerative-Ecosystem-Biomimicry-Routledge-Sustainable/dp/1138079480

Permaculture a Design Manual is an essential reference book not just for those who follow the path of permaculture but for all who wish to create and design sustainable systems or are just interested in ecological design. Sadly as a direct result of those misguided people who voted for the UK to leave the EU the value of the pound has plummeted and hence the cost of this most important of permaculture books has had to increase. Still we believe it is cheaper at eco-logic books than anywhere else, and of course post free in the UK.

https://www.eco-logicbooks.com/product/permaculture-designers-manual/

So much passes us by, unnoticed. We multi-task, switch between screens, work faster. When was the last time you paused to consider a beautifully-made object or stunning natural landscape? Yet this is when our spirits lift and our soul is restored. Designer Alan Moore invites us to rethink not only what we produce – whether it’s a website, a handmade chair, or a business – but how and why. With examples from Apple, Yeo Valley and Blitz Motorcycles, we are encouraged to ask: Is it useful and considered. Is it a thing of beauty?

https://thedobook.co/products/do-design-why-beauty-is-key-to-everything

The greatest humanitarian challenge we face today is that of providing shelter. Currently, one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than 3,000,000,000 people--nearly half the world's population--do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation. The physical design of our homes, neighborhoods and communities shapes every aspect of our lives. Yet too often architects are desperately needed in the places where they can least be afforded.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Design_Like_You_Give_a_Damn.html?id=jIJuQgAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our World: How Visual Communicators Can Save the World

This book alerts us to the role design plays in persuading global audiences to fulfill invented needs. The book then outlines a sustainable approach to both the practice and the consumption of design. All professionals will be inspired by the message of how we can feel better and do better while holding onto our principles.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Do-Good-Design-Change-Communicators/dp/032157320X

This book is a highly illustrated 'atlas', taking the reader on a journey via four distinct 'steps' (recycling, reuse, reduce, closed loop), from a linear economy towards a system emulating the natural world - a circular economy. Featuring over 20 detailed case studies describing design exemplars from the worlds of textile and fashion design, product design, interior architecture, architecture and urban design, this book's purpose is to show designers how they can successfully navigate and exploit the emerging field of resource management and the circular economy. Each step is supplemented with an in-depth interview with an expert who is successfully tackling one or more of these challenges that face all designers today and includes contributory essays from, among others, Professor Walter Stahel of the Product-Life Institute, and Professor Jonathan Chapman, author of Emotionally Durable Design

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Re_use_Atlas.html?id=nJw4vgAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

This is a 'Whole Earth Catalog' for the 21st century: an impressive and wide-ranging analysis of what's wrong with our societies, organizations, ideologies, worldviews and cultures - and how to put them right. The book covers the finance system, agriculture, design, ecology, economy, sustainability, organizations and society at large. In this remarkable book, Daniel Wahl explores ways in which we can reframe and understand the crises that we currently face, and he explores how we can live our way into the future. Moving from patterns of thinking and believing to our practice of education, design and community living, he systematically shows how we can stop chasing the mirage of certainty and control in a complex and unpredictable world.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Regenerative-Cultures-Daniel-Christian/dp/1909470775

Michael Braungart and William McDonough

William McDonough and Michael Braungart co-wrote this design manifesto in 2002. The book calls for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. Through case studies of their work, McDonough and Braungart outline their design paradigm and the vision for the ‘Next Industrial Revolution.’ Cradle to Cradle design perceives the safe and productive processes of nature’s ‘biological metabolism’ as a model for developing a ‘technical metabolism’ for industrial materials. All products can be designed for continuous recovery and reutilization as biological or techncial nutrients within these metabolisms.

https://mbdc.com/project/cradle-to-cradle-book/

Big government, big business, big everything: Kirkpatrick Sale took giantism to task in his 1980 classic, Human Scale, and today takes a new look at how the crises that imperil modern America are the inevitable result of bigness grown out of control--and what can be done about it. The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage--whether in our built environments, our politics, our business endeavors, our energy plans, or our mobility.Sale walks readers back through history to a time when buildings were scaled to the human figure (as was the Parthenon), democracies were scaled to the societies they served, and enterprise was scaled to communities. Against that backdrop, he dissects the bigger-is-better paradigm that has defined modern times and brought civilization to a crisis point. Says Sale, retreating from our calamity will take rebalancing our relationship to the environment; adopting more human-scale technologies; right-sizing our buildings, communities, and cities; and bringing our critical services--from energy, food, and garbage collection to transportation, health, and education--back to human scale as well.Like Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, Human Scale has long been a classic of modern decentralist thought and communitarian values--a key tool in the kit of those trying to localize, create meaningful governance in bioregions, or rethink our reverence of and dependence on growth, financially and otherwise.Rewritten to interpret the past few decades, Human Scale offers compelling new insights on how to turn away from the giantism that has caused escalating ecological distress and inequality, dysfunctional governments, and unending warfare and shines a light on many possible pathways that could allow us to scale down, survive, and thrive.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Scale-Revisited-Classic-Decentralist/dp/1603587128

From 2008, for the first time in human history, half of the world's population now live in cities. Yet despite a wealth of literature on green architecture and planning, there is, to date no single book which draws together theory from the full range of disciplines - from architecture, planning and ecology - which we must come to grips with if we are to design future cities which are genuinely sustainable. Paul Downton's Ecopolis takes a major step along this path.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Ecopolis.html?id=cLphPwAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow

As NYC's Transportation Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan managed the seemingly impossible and transformed the streets of one of the world s greatest, toughest cities into dynamic spaces safe for pedestrians and bikers. Her approach was dramatic and effective: she rewrote the rule book and involved local artists in a radical approach to city planning. In Streetfight, Sadik-Khan writes about the struggles she faced while making her approach work, and how it is now being implemented.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Streetfight-Handbook-Revolution-Janette-Sadik-Khan/dp/0143128973

Admired by an ever-growing number of readers and imitated by hundreds of writers, A Sand County Almanac serves as one of the cornerstones of modern conservation science, policy, and ethics. First published by Oxford University Press in 1949, it has become a conservation classic.

https://www.aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold/sand-county-almanac/

After years of reflecting on the absurdities of life on other planets, Douglas Adams teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine to find out what was happening to life on this one. Together they lead us on an unforgettable journey across the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures - animals that they may never get another chance to see. They encounter the animal kingdom in its stunning beauty, astonishing variety, and imminent peril: the giant Komodo dragon of Indonesia, the helpless but lovable Kakapo of New Zealand, the blind river dolphins of China, the white rhinos of Zaire, the rare birds of Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean. Both funny and poignant, Last Chance to See is the tale of an unforgettable wildlife odyssey - and a timely reminder of all that we must protect.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Chance-See-Douglas-Adams/dp/009953679X

An icon of the environmental movement outlines a provocative approach for reclaiming our planet. According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization - half the world's population now lives in cities, and 80 percent will by midcentury - is altering humanity's land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world's dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some long held opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth's resources.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-Earth-Discipline-Ecopragmatist-Manifesto/dp/B003ZW3EEY

Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as “inanimate.” How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which–even at its most abstract–echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/319/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-by-david-abram/9780679776390/

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the environmental and social movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and hidden history, which date back many centuries.

https://www.blessedunrest.com/

Daniel Botkin's Discordant Harmonies (1990) was considered by many to be the classic text of the environmental movement. The book was the first to challenge the then dominant view that nature remained constant over time unless disturbed by human influence. Nature was believed to achieve a form and structure that would persist forever; if disturbed, it would recover, returning to that state of perfect balance. Discordant Harmonies argued that natural ecological systems are constantly fluctuating and our plans, policies, and laws governing the environment must change to reflect this new understanding. The ideas expressed in Discordant Harmonies, considered ahead of their time in 1990, are now timelier than ever. The belief in a balanced nature is alive and well, though those who hold it are constantly confronted by scientific evidence that stands in opposition. In The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Reconsidered, Botkin brings Discordant Harmonies into the twenty-first century. The book is updated with new research and statistics, case studies on climate change, and a new introduction.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Moon_in_the_Nautilus_Shell.html?id=Ni_pmtBtvxgC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

David Haskell has won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, he brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees, exploring connections with people, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. He takes us to trees in cities (from Manhattan to Jerusalem), forests (Amazonian, North American, and boreal) and areas on the front lines of environmental change (eroding coastlines, burned mountainsides, and war zones.) In each place he shows how human history, ecology, and well-being are intimately intertwined with the lives of trees. Scientific, lyrical, and contemplative, Haskell reveals the biological connections that underpin all life. In a world beset by barriers, he reminds us that life’s substance and beauty emerge from relationship and interdependence.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317034/the-songs-of-trees-by-david-george-haskell/9780143111306/

Drawdown maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. For each solution, we describe its history, the carbon impact it provides, the relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works. The goal of the research that informs Drawdown is to determine if we can reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years. All solutions modeled are already in place, well understood, analyzed based on peer-reviewed science, and are expanding around the world.The subtitle of Drawdown—The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming—may sound brash. We chose that description because no detailed plan to reverse warming has been proposed. There have been agreements and proposals on how to slow, cap, and arrest emissions, and there are international commitments to prevent global temperature increases from exceeding two degrees centigrade over pre-industrial levels. One hundred and ninety-five nations have made extraordinary progress in coming together to acknowledge that we have a momentous civilizational crisis on our earthly doorstep and have created national plans of action. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has accomplished the most significant scientific study in the history of humankind, and continues to refine the science, expand the research, and extend our grasp of one of the most complex systems imaginable—climate. However, there is as yet no roadmap that goes beyond slowing or stopping emissions.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feral-Rewilding-Land-Human-Life/dp/014197558X

Extending the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns, The Three Ecologies argues that the ecological crises that threaten our planet are the direct result of the expansion of a new form of capitalism and that a new ecosophical approach must be found which respects the differences between all living systems. A powerful critique of capitalism and a manifesto for a new way of thinking, the book is also an ideal introduction to the work of one of Europe's most radical thinkers

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Three_Ecologies.html?id=WgnZAgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Here is one of the most provocative, wide-ranging, and delightful books ever written about our environment. Paul Colinvaux takes a penetrating look at the science of ecology, bringing to his subject both profound knowledge and an enthusiasm that will encourage a greater understanding of the environment and of the efforts of those who seek to preserve it.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Why_Big_Fierce_Animals_are_Rare.html?id=ivRxQgAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

How many of us sometimes feel that we are scratching at the walls of this life, seeking to find our way into a wider space beyond? That our mild, polite existence sometimes seems to crush the breath out of us? Feral is the lyrical and gripping story of George Monbiot's efforts to re-engage with nature and discover a new way of living. He shows how, by restoring and rewilding our damaged ecosystems on land and at sea, we can bring wonder back into our lives. Making use of some remarkable scientific discoveries, Feral lays out a new, positive environmentalism, in which nature is allowed to find its own way.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/george-monbiot/31982/

Marianne E. Krasny and Keith G. Tidball

In communities across the country and around the world, people are coming together to rebuild and restore local environments that have been affected by crisis or disaster. In New Orleans after Katrina, in New York after Sandy, in Soweto after apartheid, and in any number of postindustrial, depopulated cities, people work together to restore nature, renew communities, and heal themselves. In Civic Ecology, Marianne Krasny and Keith Tidball offer stories of this emerging grassroots environmental stewardship, along with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding and studying it as a growing international phenomenon.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/civic-ecology

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble

In this haunting fable about the dangers of destroying our forests and woodlands, the long-suffering Lorax struggles to save all the Truffula Trees from the wicked Once-ler's axe. A hilarious story with typical zany humour and silly rhymes, that packs a punch with its ecological message without feeling heavy-handed or worthy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lorax-Dr-Seuss/dp/0007326181

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world--and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the_World.html?id=Ix68rQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability, but to civilization itself . . . and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in--the Anthropocene--demands a radical new vision of human life. In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014), Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our mortality.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Die-Anthropocene-Reflections-Civilization/dp/0872866696

Over the course of a year, Jules Pretty walked along the shoreline of East Anglia in southeastern England, eventually exploring four hundred miles on foot (and another hundred miles by boat). It is a coast and a culture that is about to be lost-not yet, perhaps, but soon-to rising tides and industrial sprawl. This Luminous Coast takes the reader with him on his journey over land and water; over sea walls of dried grass, beside stretched fields of golden crops, alongside white sails gliding across the intricate lacework of invisible creeks and estuaries, under vast skies that are home to curlews and redshanks and the outpourings of skylarks.East Anglia's coastline is as much a human landscape as it is a natural one, and Pretty is equally perceptive about the region's cultural heritage and its "industrial wild": fishing villages and the modern seaside resorts, family farms and oil refineries, pleasure piers and concrete seawalls, cozy pubs and military installations. Through words and photographs, Pretty interweaves stories of the land and sea with people past and present. He is a passionate and sensitive guide to a region in transition, under stress, and perhaps even doomed, as finely attuned to its history as he is to its unique sensory world.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Luminous-Coast-Walking-Englands/dp/0801456517

Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist, an ardent environmentalist. But as the environmental movement began to focus on 'sustainability' rather than the defence of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. Full of grief and fury as well as passionate evocations of nature and the wild, Kingsnorth's collection of provocative, urgent and fearless essays chart the change in his thinking. Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist is an ultimately hopeful book which poses hard questions about how we've lived and how we should live.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Confessions_of_a_Recovering_Environmenta.html?id=niWBtAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

The Wealth of Nature proposes a new model of economics based on the integral value of ecology. Building on the foundations of E. F. Schumacher's revolutionary "economics as if people mattered," this book examines the true cost of confusing money with wealth. By analyzing the mistakes of contemporary economics, it shows how an economy centered on natural capital—the raw materials that support human life—can move our society toward a more productive relationship with the planet that sustains us all.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wealth-Nature-Economics-Sustainable-Agriculture/dp/0865716730

The World Without Us is a non-fiction book about what would happen to the natural and built environment if humans suddenly disappeared, written by American journalist Alan Weisman and published by St. Martin's Thomas Dunne Books.[1] It is a book-length expansion of Weisman's own February 2005 Discover article "Earth Without People".[2] Written largely as a thought experiment, it outlines, for example, how cities and houses would deteriorate, how long man-made artifacts would last, and how remaining lifeforms would evolve. Weisman concludes that residential neighborhoods would become forests within 500 years, and that radioactive waste, bronze statues, plastics, and Mount Rushmore would be among the longest-lasting evidence of human presence on Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us

Thirty years ago, two young biologists named Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson triggered a far-reaching scientific revolution. In a book titled The Theory of Island Biogeography, they presented a new view of a little-understood matter: the geographical patterns in which animal and plant species occur. Why do marsupials exist in Australia and South America, but not in Africa? Why do tigers exist in Asia, but not in New Guinea? Influenced by MacArthur and Wilson's book, an entire generation of ecologists has recognized that island biogeography - the study of the distribution of species on islands and islandlike patches of landscape - yields important insights into the origin and extinction of species everywhere. The new mode of thought focuses particularly on a single question: Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our own age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into islandlike fragments by human activity, the implications of island biogeography are more urgent than ever. Until now, this scientific revolution has remained unknown to the general public. But over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed its threads on a globe-circling journey of discovery. In Madagascar, he has considered the meaning of tenrecs, a group of strange, prickly mammals native to that island. On the island of Guam, he has confronted a pestilential explosion of snakes and spiders. In these and other places, he has prowled through wild terrain with extraordinary scientists who study unusual beasts. The result is The Song of the Dodo, a book filled with landscape, wonder, and ideas. Besides being a grandoutdoor adventure, it is, above all, a wake-up call to the age of extinctions.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Dodo-David-Quammen/dp/0684827123

This book tells stories of how ordinary people in their everyday lives have responded to the challenges of living more sustainably. In these difficult times, we need stories that engage, enchant and inspire. Most of all, we need stories of practical changes, of community action, of changing hearts and minds.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Stories_of_the_Great_Turning.html?id=PR2eDAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

We are all members of a one-earth society, and caring for the earth and soul is interrelated. This is the message of Satish Kumar, the internationally-respected peace and environment activist who has been gently setting the agenda for change for over 50 years. In Soil, Soul & Society, Satish presents the new trinity for our age of sustainability. One that shares the knowledge that we ourselves are very much part of nature; that what we do to nature we in fact do to ourselves; and that the earth is soulful. In this book, he inspires readers with the knowledge we are all leaders and can create change. He urges readers to create a new consciousness that reveres nature and explores how, as a global society, we need to embrace diversity and become pilgrims on this earth not tourists. To bring about change in the world we must be the change we wish to see.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Soil_Soul_Society.html?id=bZfAoQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

World-renowned environmental activist and physicist Vandana Shiva calls for a radical shift in the values that govern democracies, condemning the role that unrestricted capitalism has played in the destruction of environments and livelihoods. She explores the issues she helped bring to international attention--genetic food engineering, culture theft, and natural resource privatization--uncovering their links to the rising tide of fundamentalism, violence against women, and planetary death. Struggles on the streets of Seattle and Cancun and in homes and farms across the world have yielded a set of principles based on inclusion, nonviolence, reclaiming the commons, and freely sharing the earth's resources. These ideals, which Dr. Shiva calls "Earth Democracy," serve as an urgent call to peace and as the basis for a just and sustainable future.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Earth_Democracy.html?id=G6qmCgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

One of the most eminent cultural historians of our time presents the culmination of his ideas and calls for us to experience creation as a source of wonder and delight rather than a commodity for our personal use. Thomas Berry has written and lectured extensively on technological civilization and the need for us to move from being a disrupting force on this earth to a benign presence. This transition is the Great Work of which he speaks. It is at the same time the most necessary and most ennobling work we will ever undertake. Berry's message is not one of doom but of hope. He calls upon all aspects of society to remember their function, particularly the universities and other educational institutions whose role is to guide students into an appreciation rather than an exploitation of the world around them. Berry is the leading spokesperson for the Earth, and his profound ecological insight at this determining moment in history illuminates the path we need to take in the realms of ethics, politics, economics, and education if both we and the planet are to survive.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Great_Work.html?id=oysSAQAAIAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

The Nature Process: How To Easily And Effortlessly Step Into Your Natural Power And Be The Change You Want To Make In The World

Is there a deep longing within you to go beyond the stories that no longer serve you into the fullest expression of what it means to be alive?Do you see the shift in consciousness sweeping across the planet and want to fully step up and be a part of it?In this powerful guide, coach and growth expert, Tabitha Jayne shows you how to re-connect with the earth, the universe, and yourself. The Nature Process reveals the truth that will fundamentally change your life. We are one with nature. When we consciously connect to nature we plug ourselves into the most powerful source of energy known to humanity.It's time to see just how powerful you truly are. Easily and effortlessly, you can create the life you want, let go of the pain of the past, and wake up every morning feeling truly alive.Through practicing The Nature Process, you'll be able to dissolve limiting beliefs and energetic blockages and feel a new connection to life itself that will support you to be the difference you want to create in the world.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Nature_Process.html?id=BT_CoQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book was published on 27 September 1962 and it documented the adverse effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring

In his long-awaited memoir, Yvon Chouinard-legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.-shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth. From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling, ambitious climbing expeditions that inspired his innovative designs for the sport's equipment, Let My People Go Surfing is the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business life-a book that will deeply affect entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts alike.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Let_My_People_Go_Surfing.html?id=sjBAfE-8-fQC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Enter ancient lands of wind and waves where the planet’s greatest flyers battle for survival. As the only creatures at home on land, at sea, and in the air, seabirds have evolved to thrive in the most demanding environment on Earth. The Seabird’s Cry travels ocean paths, fusing traditional knowledge with astonishing facts science has recently learned about these creatures: the way their bodies actually work, their dazzling navigational skills, their ability to smell their way to fish or home and to understand the discipline of the winds upon which they depend.This book is a paean to the beauty of life on the wing, but, even as we are coming to understand the seabirds, a global tragedy is unfolding. Their numbers are in freefall, dropping by nearly 70 percent in the last sixty years, a billion fewer now than in 1950. Extinction stalks the ocean, and there is a danger that the hundred-million-year-old cries of a seabird colony, rolling around in the bays and headlands of high latitudes, will this century become but a memory.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Seabird_s_Cry.html?id=aZgFtgEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Here is the strange story of the seas - how they were born, how life emerged from them, and the marine world within them. Rachel Carson's writing teems with images - the newly-formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky; volcanic action throwing up huge masses on the ocean floor to create immense mountains and desolate canyons; giant squid battling sperm-whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface. A new chapter by Jeffrey Levinton, brings the science of "The Sea Around Us" up to date. Levinton incorporates the most recent thinking on continental drift, coral reefs, the spread of the ocean floor, the deterioration of the oceans, mass extinction of sea life, and many other topics. First published in 1951, this work won the National Book Award.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Around-Oxford-University-Press-Paperback/dp/0195069978

A chronicle of a solitary year spent on a Cape Cod beach, The Outermost House has long been recognized as a classic of American nature writing. Henry Beston had originally planned to spend just two weeks in his seaside home, but was so possessed by the mysterious beauty of his surroundings that he found he "could not go." Instead, he sat down to try and capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to: the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued that, "The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot." Seventy-five years after they were first published, Beston's words are more true than ever.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Outermost-House-Year-Great-Beach/dp/080507368X

By the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is the story of a father and son walking alone through burned America, heading through the ravaged landscape to the coast.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Cormac-McCarthy/dp/0330468464

Howards End has remained one of Forster’s most beloved novels. Few works combine social comedy and political commentary with the skillful characterizations seen in the Schlegel sisters. Writing during a time of lively discussion about his country’s socioeconomic conditions, Forster conceived the work as a “condition-of-England novel,” a work designed to enter Edwardian debates about wealth and poverty, art and pragmatism, country life and urban sprawl that would not have sounded unfamiliar in Thatcher’s England or Reagan’s America. Forster, with a comic suspicion of the dogmas championed by liberals and conservatives alike, provides a distinctly humanistic perspective on some of the central debates of his time and ours.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/296506/howards-end-by-e-m-forster/9780141182131/readers-guide/

Kindred is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. First published in 1979, it is still widely popular. It has been frequently chosen as a text for community-wide reading programs and book organizations, as well as being a common choice for high school and college courses. On her twenty-sixth birthday, Dana and her husband are moving into their apartment when she starts to feel dizzy. She falls to her knees, nauseous. Then the world falls away. She finds herself at the edge of a green wood by a vast river. A child is screaming. Wading into the water, she pulls him to safety, only to find herself face to face with a very old looking rifle, in the hands of the boy's father. She's terrified. The next thing she knows she's back in her apartment, soaking wet. It's the most terrifying experience of her life ... until it happens again. The longer Dana spends in nineteenth century Maryland - a very dangerous place for a black woman - the more aware she is that her life might be over before it's even begun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(novel)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical regime. The novel also coined many new words and phrases which regular appear in popular culture, such as 'Big Brother', 'thoughtcrime', 'doublethink' and 'Newspeak'.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/57013/nineteen-eighty-four/

Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone. An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him. By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/I-Am-Legend-Richard-Matheson/dp/0765357151

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/12/autumn-ali-smith-review

Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grapes-Wrath-John-Steinbeck/dp/0141185066

The final novel from Aldous Huxley, Island is a provocative counterpoint to his worldwide classic Brave New World, in which a flourishing, ideal society located on a remote Pacific island attracts the envy of the outside world.

https://www.amazon.com/Island-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0061561797

The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond: An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers – each summoned in different ways by trees – are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours – vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Overstory-Longlisted-Booker-Prize-2018/dp/1785151630

A seminal work of dystopian fiction that foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian with an introduction by Clarence Brown. In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/17201/we/

Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine” (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization.

https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060850523

In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine...to a shattering revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe. Robert Charles Wilson has crafted a brilliant science fiction novel--a view of an utterly different 20th century.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Darwinia-Robert-Charles-Wilson/dp/0765319055

The Mars trilogy is a series of award-winning science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the intensely personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster. The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. The main trilogy won a number of prestigious awards. Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at modern society.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Player-Piano-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333781

Not every gift is a blessing. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh. Melanie is a very special girl. Emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is the most powerful and affecting thriller you will read this year.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-All-Gifts-original-thriller/dp/0356500152

The Hyperion Cantos is a series of science fiction novels by Dan Simmons. The title was originally used for the collection of the first pair of books in the series, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion,and later came to refer to the overall storyline, including Endymion, The Rise of Endymion, and a number of short stories. More narrowly, inside the fictional storyline, after the first volume, the Hyperion Cantos is an epic poem written by the character Martin Silenus covering in verse form the events of the first book.Of the four novels, Hyperion received the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1990;The Fall of Hyperion won the Locus and British Science Fiction Association Awards in 1991; and The Rise of Endymion received the Locus Award in 1998. All four novels were also nominated for various science fiction awards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos

A novel both timely and prophetic, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia is a hopeful antidote to the environmental concerns of today, set in an ecologically sound future society. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as the “newest name after Wells, Verne, Huxley, and Orwell,” Callenbach offers a visionary blueprint for the survival of our planet . . . and our future. Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a “stable-state” ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, this isolated, mysterious nation is welcoming its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston.Skeptical yet curious about this green new world, Weston is determined to report his findings objectively. But from the start, he’s alternately impressed and unsettled by the laws governing Ecotopia’s earth-friendly agenda: energy-efficient “mini-cities” to eliminate urban sprawl, zero-tolerance pollution control, tree worship, ritual war games, and a woman-dominated government that has instituted such peaceful revolutions as the twenty-hour workweek and employee ownership of farms and businesses. His old beliefs challenged, his cynicism replaced by hope, Weston meets a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman and undertakes a relationship whose intensity will lead him to a critical choice between

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Ecotopia.html?id=UPRgOQzTaSoC&redir_esc=y

A protégé of Michael Pollan shares the story of a little known group of renegade farmers who defied corporate agribusiness by launching a unique sustainable farm-to-table food movement. The story of the Lentil Underground begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America’s Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to “get big or get out.” But twenty-seven-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climate conditions, so their farmers aren’t beholden to industrial methods. Today, Oien leads an underground network of organic farmers who work with heirloom seeds and biologically diverse farm systems. Under the brand Timeless Natural Food, their unique business-cum-movement has grown into a million dollar enterprise that sells to Whole Foods, hundreds of independent natural foods stores, and a host of renowned restaurants. From the heart of Big Sky Country comes this inspiring story of a handful of colorful pioneers who have successfully bucked the chemically-based food chain and the entrenched power of agribusiness’s one percent, by stubbornly banding together. Journalist and native Montanan Liz Carlisle weaves an eye-opening and richly reported narrative that will be welcomed by everyone concerned with the future of American agriculture and natural food in an increasingly uncertain world.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Lentil_Underground.html?id=SIzMAwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World

Discover the hidden power soil has to reverse climate change, and how a regenerative farming diet not only delivers us better health and wellness, but also rebuilds our most precious resource—the very ground that feeds us. Josh Tickell, one of America’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers and director of Fuel, has dedicated most of his life to saving the environment. Now, in Kiss the Ground, he explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet. Through fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists, this remarkable book, soon to be a full-length documentary film narrated by Woody Harrelson, will teach you how to become an agent in humanity’s single most important and time sensitive mission. Reverse climate change and effectively save the world—all through the choices you make in how and what to eat.

http://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Kiss-the-Ground/Josh-Tickell/9781501170256

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it? Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion–most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301692/in-defense-of-food-by-michael-pollan/9780143114963/

From the author of What to Eat and Shopped, a revelatory investigation into what really goes into the food we eat.Even with 25 years experience as a journalist and investigator of the food chain, Joanna Blythman still felt she had unanswered questions about the food we consume every day. How 'natural' is the process for making a 'natural' flavouring? What, exactly, is modified starch, and why is it an ingredient in so many foods? What is done to pitta bread to make it stay 'fresh' for six months? And why, when you eat a supermarket salad, does the taste linger in your mouth for several hours after? Swallow This is a fascinating exploration of the food processing industry and its products - not just the more obvious ready meals, chicken nuggets and tinned soups, but the less overtly industrial - washed salads, smoothies, yoghurts, cereal bars, bread, fruit juice, prepared vegetables. Forget illegal, horse-meat-scandal processes, every step in the production of these is legal, but practised by a strange and inaccessible industry, with methods a world-away from our idea of domestic food preparation, and obscured by technical speak, unintelligible ingredients manuals, and clever labelling practices. Determined to get to the bottom of the impact the industry has on our food, Joanna Blythman has gained unprecedented access to factories, suppliers and industry insiders, to give an utterly eye-opening account of what we're really swallowing.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Swallow_this.html?id=voNdoAEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

In the 1970s, British supermarkets had only 10% of the UK's grocery spend. Now they swallow up 80%, influencing how we shop, what we eat, how we spend our leisure time, how much rubbish we generate, even the very look of our physical environment. Award-winning food writer Joanna Blythman investigates the enormous impact that these big box retailers are having on our lives. She meets the farmers who are selling food to supermarkets for less than they need to survive and the wholesalers who have been eliminated from the supply chain; she travels to suburban retail parks to meet the teenagers and part-timers who stack our shelves and reveals the hoops third world suppliers must jump through to earn supermarket contracts.This thought-provoking, witty and sometimes chilling voyage of discovery is sure to make you think twice before you enthusiastically reach for that supermarket trolley again.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SHOPPED-Shocking-Power-British-Supermarkets/dp/0007158041

In this utterly enchanting book, food writer Carpenter chronicles with grace and generosity her experiences as an “urban farmer.” With her boyfriend Bill’s help, her squatter’s vegetable garden in one of the worst parts of the Bay Area evolved into further adventures in bee and poultry keeping in the desire for such staples as home-harvested honey, eggs and home-raised meat. The built-in difficulties also required dealing with the expected noise and mess as well as interference both human and animal. When one turkey survived to see, so to speak, its way to the Thanksgiving table, the success spurred Carpenter to rabbitry and a monthlong plan to eat from her own garden. Consistently drawing on her Idaho ranch roots and determined even in the face of bodily danger, her ambitions led to ownership and care of a brace of pigs straight out of E.B. White. She chronicles the animals’ slaughter with grace and sensitivity, their cooking and consumption with a gastronome’s passion, and elegantly folds in riches like urban farming history. Her way with narrative and details, like the oddly poetic names of chicken and watermelon breeds, gives her memoir an Annie Dillard lyricism, but it’s the juxtaposition of the farming life with inner-city grit that elevates it to the realm of the magical.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59420-221-6

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as If Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents an essential new strategy for investing in local food systems and introduces a group of fiduciary activists who are exploring what should come after industrial finance and industrial agriculture. Theirs is a vision for investing that puts soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations and serves people and place as much at it serves industry sectors and markets. Leading the charge is Woody Tasch-whose decades of work as a venture capitalist, foundation treasurer, and entrepreneur now shed new light on a truer, more beautiful, more prudent kind of fiduciary responsibility. He offers an alternative vision to the dusty old industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when dollars, and the businesses they financed, lost their connection to place; slow money, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in the new economic, social, and environmental realities of the 21st century. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money is a call to action for designing capital markets built around not extraction and consumption but preservation and restoration

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inquiries-into-Nature-Slow-Money/dp/1603582541

n recent years, scientific advances in our understanding of animal minds have led to major changes in how we think about, and treat, animals in zoos and aquariums. The general public, it seems, is slowly coming to understand that animals like apes, elephants, and dolphins have not just brains, but complicated inner and social lives, and that we need to act accordingly. Yet that realization hasn’t yet made its presence felt to any great degree in our most intimate relationship with animals: at the dinner table. Sure, there are vegetarians and vegans all over, but at the same time, meat consumption is up, and meat remains a central part of the culinary and dining experience for the majority of people in the developed world. With Personalities on the Plate, Barbara King asks us to think hard about our meat eating--and how we might reduce it. But this isn’t a polemic intended to convert readers to veganism. What she is interested in is why we’ve not drawn food animals into our concern and just what we do know about the minds and lives of chickens, cows, octopuses, fish, and more. Rooted in the latest science, and built on a mix of firsthand experience (including entomophagy, which, yes, is what you think it is) and close engagement with the work of scientists, farmers, vets, and chefs, Personalities on the Plate is an unforgettable journey through the world of animals we eat. Knowing what we know--and what we may yet learn--what is the proper ethical stance toward eating meat? What are the consequences for the planet? How can we life an ethically and ecologically sound life through our food choices?

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo19085093.html

Miraculous Abundance: One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers, and Enough Food to Feed the World

The Bec Hellouin model for growing food, sequestering carbon, creating jobs, and increasing biodiversity without using fossil fuels. When Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer set out to create their farm in an historic Normandy village, they had no idea just how much their lives would change. Neither one had ever farmed before. Charles had been circumnavigating the globe by sail, operating a floating school that taught students about ecology and indigenous cultures. Perrine had been an international lawyer in Japan. Each had returned to France to start a new life. Eventually, Perrine joined Charles in Normandy, and Le Ferme du Bec Hellouin was born. Bec Hellouin has since become a celebrated model of innovative, ecological agriculture in Europe, connected to national and international organizations addressing food security, heralded by celebrity chefs as well as the Slow Food movement, and featured in the inspiring César and COLCOA award-winning documentary film, Demain ("Tomorrow"). Miraculous Abundance is the eloquent tale of the couple’s evolution from creating a farm to sustain their family to delving into an experiment in how to grow the most food possible, in the most ecological way possible, and create a farm model that can carry us into a post-carbon future—when oil is no longer moving goods and services, energy is scarcer, and localization is a must.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Miraculous_Abundance.html?id=m1i5CwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security

The Carbon Farming Solution does not present a prescription for how cropland should be used and is not, first and foremost, a how-to manual, although following up on references in a given section will frequently provide such information. Instead, The Carbon Farming Solution is—at its root—a toolkit. It is the most complete collection of climate-friendly crops and practices currently available. With this toolkit, farmers, communities, and governments large and small, can successfully launch carbon farming projects with the most appropriate crops and practices to their climate, locale, and socioeconomic needs.Toensmeier’s ultimate goal is to place carbon farming firmly in the center of the climate solutions platform, alongside clean solar and wind energy. With The Carbon Farming Solution, Toensmeier wants to change the discussion, impact policy decisions, and steer mitigation funds to the research, projects, and people around the world who envision a future where agriculture becomes the protagonist in this fraught, urgent, and unprecedented drama of our time. Citizens, farmers, and funders will be inspired to use the tools presented in this important new book to transform degraded lands around the world into productive carbon-storing landscapes.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Carbon_Farming_Solution.html?id=izTYCwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

The problem of agriculture is as old as civilization. Throughout history, great societies that abused their land withered into poverty or disappeared entirely. Now we risk repeating this ancient story on a global scale due to ongoing soil degradation, a changing climate, and a rising population. But there is reason for hope. David R. Montgomery introduces us to farmers around the world at the heart of a brewing soil health revolution that could bring humanity's ailing soil back to life remarkably fast. Growing a Revolution draws on visits to farms in the industrialized world and developing world to show that a new combination of farming practices can deliver innovative, cost-effective solutions to problems farmers face today.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Growing_a_Revolution.html?id=1l8tvgAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet

Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world’s soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Soil_Will_Save_Us.html?id=ydXTAgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

With the decline of family farms and rural communities and the rise of corporate farming and the resulting environmental degradation, American agriculture is in crisis. But this crisis offers the opportunity to rethink agriculture in sustainable terms. Here one of the most eloquent and influential proponents of sustainable agriculture explains what this means. These engaging essays describe what sustainable agriculture is, why it began, and how it can succeed. Together they constitute a clear and compelling vision for rebalancing the ecological, economic, and social dimensions of agriculture to meet the needs of the present without compromising the future. In Crisis and Opportunity, John E. Ikerd outlines the consequences of agricultural industrialization, then details the methods that can restore economic viability, ecological soundness, and social responsibility to our agricultural system and thus ensure sustainable agriculture as the foundation of a sustainable food system and a sustainable society.

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison/9780803211421/

Wes Jackson can teach us many things about the land, soil, and conservation, but what most resonates is this: The ecosphere is self-regulating, and as often as we attempt to understand it, we are not its builders, and our manuals will often be faulty. The only responsible way to learn the nuances of the land is to study the soil and vegetation in their natural state and pass this knowledge on to future generations. In Nature as Measure, a collection of Jackson’s essays from Altars of Unhewn Stone and Becoming Native to This Place, these ideas of land conservation and education are written from the point of view of a man who has practiced what he’s preached and proven that it is possible to partially restore much of the land that we’ve ravaged. Wes Jackson lays the foundation for a new farming economy, grounded in nature’s principles and located in dying small towns and rural communities. Exploding the tenets of industrial agriculture, Jackson seeks to integrate food production with nature in a way that sustains both.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Nature_as_Measure.html?id=Z7HIHP3xIuwC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind, the author, an entrepreneur and sustainability leader, uses recent findings in cognitive science and systems theory to reveal the hidden layers of values that form today's cultural norms.Uprooting the tired clichés of the science-religion debate, he shows how medieval Christian rationalism acted as an incubator for scientific thought, which in turn shaped our modern vision of the conquest of nature. The author probes our current crisis of unsustainability and argues that it is not an inevitable result of human nature, but is culturally driven: a product of particular mental patterns that could conceivably be reshaped. By shining a light on our possible futures, the book foresees a coming struggle between two contrasting views of humanity: one driving to a technological endgame of artificially enhanced humans, the other enabling a sustainable future arising from our intrinsic connectedness with each other and the natural world. This struggle, it concludes, is one in which each of us will play a role through the meaning we choose to forge from the lives we lead.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Patterning_Instinct.html?id=4jbWDAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/1846558239

Credited with discovering more species than Darwin, praised for his “ability to take complex ideas and—seemingly effortlessly—make them accessible” (Sydney Morning Herald), Tim Flannery is one of the world’s most influential scientists and a best-selling author. In his newest book, Here on Earth—an immediate Australian best seller—he has written a captivating and dramatic narrative about the origins of life and the history of our planet. Beginning at the moment of creation with the Big Bang, Here on Earth explores the evolution of Earth from a galactic cloud of dust and gas to a planet with a metallic core and early signs of life within a billion years of being created. In a compelling narrative, Flannery describes the formation of the Earth’s crust and atmosphere, as well as the transformation of the planet’s oceans from toxic brews of metals (such as iron, copper, and lead) to life-sustaining bodies covering 70 percent of the planet’s surface. Life, Flannery shows, first appeared in these oceans in the form of microscopic plants and bacteria, and these metals served as catalysts for the earliest biological processes known to exist. From this starting point, Flannery tells the fascinating story of the evolution of our own species, exploring several early human species—from the diminutive creatures (the famed hobbits) who lived in Africa around two million years ago to Homo erectus—before turning his attention to Homo sapiens, who first started leaving Africa some fifty thousand years ago. Drawing on Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Russell Wallace’s theories of evolution and Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, Tim Flannery’s Here on Earth is a dazzling account of life on our planet.

https://groveatlantic.com/book/here-on-earth/

David Korten’s classic bestseller When Corporations Rule the World was one of the first books to articulate the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy. In The Great Turning he argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely one manifestation of what he calls “Empire”: the organization of society through hierarchy and violence that has largely held sway for the past 5,000 years. The Great Turning traces the evolution of Empire from ancient times to the present day but also tells the parallel story of the attempt to develop a democratic alternative to Empire, beginning in Athens and continuing with the founding of the United States of America—although elitists with an imperial agenda have consistently sought to undermine the bold and inspiring “American experiment.” Finally, Korten draws on evidence from sources as varied as evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to make the case that “Earth Community”—a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable alternative to Empire based on democratic principles of partnership—is indeed possible. And he outlines a grassroots strategy for beginning the momentous turning toward a future of as-yet-unrealized human potential.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Great_Turning.html?id=mbyjscQ2KacC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Guns, Germs and Steel' is nothing less than an enquiry into the reasonswhy Europe and the Near East became the cradle of modern societies- eventually giving rise to capitalism and science, the dominant forces in our contemporary world-and why,until modern times. Africa, Australasia and the Americas lagged behind in technological sophistication and in political and military power. The native peoplesof those continents are still suffering the consequences. Diamond shows definitively that the origins of this inequality in human fortunes cannot be laid at the door of race or inherent features of the people themselves. He argues that the inequality stems instaed from the differing natural resources available to the people of each continent.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Guns_Germs_and_Steel.html?id=OwVrSMQPPowC

Journalist Masha Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today's terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Future_Is_History.html?id=mNl4swEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan

Mid-nineteenth century Russian radicals who witnessed the Meiji Restoration saw it as the most sweeping revolution in recent history and the impetus for future global progress. Acting outside imperial encounters, they initiated underground transnational networks with Japan. Prominent intellectuals and cultural figures, from Peter Kropotkin and Lev Tolstoy to Saigo Takamori and Tokutomi Roka, pursued these unofficial relationships through correspondence, travel, and networking, despite diplomatic and military conflicts between their respective nations. Tracing these non-state networks, Anarchist Modernity uncovers a major current in Japanese intellectual and cultural life between 1860 and 1930 that might be described as “cooperatist anarchist modernity”—a commitment to realizing a modern society through mutual aid and voluntary activity, without the intervention of state governance. These efforts later crystallized into such movements as the Nonwar Movement, Esperantism, and the popularization of the natural sciences.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674073319

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Cunning_of_History.html?id=x_utYMeIdPoC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/On_Tyranny.html?id=3z7cDQAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Travellers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism Through the Eyes of Everyday People

Travellers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating first-hand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including students, politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, journalists, fascists, artists, tourists, even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler - one so palpable that the reader will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Travellers_in_the_Third_Reich.html?id=7TzFAQAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

When the first edition of Hope in the Dark was published in mid-2004 it gained an instant cult audience. Many readers were so inspired by Solnit's book that they bought multiple copies to give to friends. This new, significantly expanded edition covers, among other things, the political territory of America and the world after George Bush's re-election. Acclaimed author Rebecca Solnit draws on her life as a writer and activist, on the events of our moment, on our deepest past, to argue for hope - hope even in the dark. Solnit reminds us of how changed the world has been by the activism of the past five decades. Offering a dazzling account of some of the least expected of those changes, she proposes a vision of cause-and-effect relations that provides new grounds for political engagement in the present. Counting historic victories - from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Zapatista uprising to Seattle in 1999 to the worldwide marches against war in Iraq to Cancun in September 2003 - she traces the rise of a sophisticated, supple, nonviolent new movement that unites all the diverse and fragmentary issues of the eighties and nineties in our new century.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Dark-Untold-Histories-Possibilities/dp/1560258284

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, envisions a not-too-distant world in which we face a new set of challenges. In Homo Deus, he examines our future with his trademark blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century – from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow/dp/1910701874

Acclaimed historian Natalie Zemon Davis's accessible and dramatic biography was widely hailed as a masterpiece and tells the story of Leo Africanus, a sixteenth-century Moroccan who embodies the rich and complex exchanges between Europe and Africa during the Renaissance. Trickster Travels offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and is a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Trickster_Travels.html?id=J2ANAQAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Eighteenth-century Britain was the world’s leading centre for the slave trade. Profits soared and fortunes were made, but in 1788 things began to change. Bury The Chains tells the remarkable story of the men who sought to end slavery and brought the issue to the heart of British political life.

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/adam-hochschild/bury-the-chains

Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. In this landmark book, Eisenstein explains how a disconnection from the natural world and one another is built into the foundations of civilization: into science, religion, money, technology, medicine, and education as we know them. As a result, each of these institutions faces a grave and growing crisis, fueling our near-pathological pursuit of technological fixes even as we push our planet to the brink of collapse. Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. As our old constructs of self and world dissolve in crisis, we are entering a new narrative of interbeing, a more expansive sense of self, and a more ecological relationship to nature. Our darkest hour bears the possibility of a more beautiful world—not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. Breathtaking in its scope and intelligence, The Ascent of Humanity is a remarkable book showing what it truly means to be human.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Ascent_of_Humanity.html?id=y7qd1OGDIGsC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of American educator Booker T. Washington (1856-1915). The book describes his personal experience of having to work to rise up from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton Institute, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, up by the bootstraps. He reflects on the generosity of both teachers and philanthropists who helped in educating blacks and Native Americans. He describes his efforts to instill manners, breeding, health and a feeling of dignity to students. His educational philosophy stresses combining academic subjects with learning a trade (something which is reminiscent of the educational theories of John Ruskin). Washington explained that the integration of practical subjects is partly designed to reassure the white community as to the usefulness of educating black people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_from_Slavery

Affluenza is that strange desire we feel to spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t know . . . A truly modern affliction, affluenza is endemic in Western societies, encouraged by those who profit from a culture of exploitation and waste. So how do we cure ourselves? In this sparkling book of ideas, Richard Denniss shows we must distinguish between consumerism, the love of buying things, which is undeniably harmful to us and the planet, and materialism, the love of things, which can in fact be beneficial. We should cherish the things we own – preserve them, repair them, and then gift or sell them when we no longer need them. We must foster new ways of thinking and acting that do not squander limited resources, and which support the things we value most: vibrant communities and rich experiences.

https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/curing-affluenza

Active Hope is about finding, and offering, our best response to the crisis of sustainability unfolding in our world. It offers tools that help us face the mess we’re in, as well as find and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society.

https://www.activehope.info/

Alarmed by drastic changes in the Earth’s systems, the author, a climate scientist and suburban father of two, embarked on a journey to change his life and the world. He began by bicycling, growing food, meditating, and making other simple, fulfilling changes. Ultimately, he slashed his climate impact to under a tenth of the US average and became happier in the process. Being the Change explores the connections between our individual daily actions and our collective predicament. It merges science, spirituality, and practical action to develop a satisfying and appropriate response to global warming. The core message is deeply optimistic: a world without fossil fuels is not only possible — it will be better.

https://beingthechangebook.com/