The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

Yvon Chouinard · 266 pages

The long-awaited memoir/manifesto from legendary climber, businessman, and environmentalist Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of one of the world's most inspiring companies, Patagonia, Inc.Whether you care about adventure sports, the fate of the natural world, or pure brand maintenance and business success, Patagonia, Inc. is one of the earth's most interesting and inspiring companies. For almost

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Elizabeth L. Cline · 258 pages

Evaluates the costs of low-priced clothing while tracing the author's own transformation to a conscientious shopper, a journey during which she visited a garment factory, learned to resole shoes, and shopped for local, sustainable clothing.

Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream

William Powers · 278 pages

"Why would a successful American physician choose to live in a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot cabin without running water or electricity? To find out, writer and activist William Powers visited Dr. Jackie Benton in rural North Carolina. No Name Creek gurgled through Benton’s permaculture farm, and she stroked honeybees’ wings as she shared her wildcrafter philosophy of living on a planet in crisis. Po

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver · 384 pages

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begi

Desert Solitaire

Edward Abbey · 270 pages

An account of the author's experiences, observations, and reflections as a seasonal park ranger in southeast Utah. When Desert Solitaire was first published in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. Rude and sensitive. Thought-provoking and mystical. Angry and loving. Both Abbey and this book are all of these and more. Here, the legendary author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey's Road an

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

Dan Barber · 486 pages

"Renowned chef Dan Barber introduces a new kind of cuisine that represents the future of American dining in THE THIRD PLATE. Barber explores the evolution of American food from the "first plate," or industrially-produced, meat-heavy dishes, to the "second plate" of grass-fed meat and organic greens, and says that both of these approaches are ultimately neither sustainable nor healthy. Instead, Bar

Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living

Doug Fine · 210 pages

Advance praise for Farewell, My Subaru"Fine is Bryson Funny." --Santa Cruz Sentinel "Fine is an amiable and self-deprecating storyteller in the mold of Douglas Adams. If you're a fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-style humor -- and also looking to find out how to raise your own livestock to feed your ice-cream fetish -- Farewell may prove a vital tool." -- The Washington Post "Fine is an

The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

Julia Butterfly Hill · 256 pages

The woman who spent more than two years living in Luna, a thousand-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California, tells the story of protecting old growth forests, siege by opponents, threatening weather, and unexpected support from around the world.

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks

Terry Tempest Williams · 416 pages

"A personal, lyrical, and idiosyncratic ode to our national parks"-- "For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women W

Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood

Sandra Steingraber · 342 pages

Sleeping Naked is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days

Vanessa Farquharson · 267 pages

Canadian journalist Farquharson takes readers on her 366-day journey to live a more environmentally conscious lifestyle, making one positive change each day. While a few changes are worthy (the author sells her car), some seem a bit bizarre (she turns off her fridge and freezer?though she doesn't divulge exactly where her food is coming from after that point) and many are superficial or symbolic e

The 100-Mile Diet : A Year Of Local Eating

Alisa Smith, J.B. MacKinnon · 272 pages

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Janisse Ray · 285 pages

A memoir of a childhood, spend in an isolated Georgia community of Crackers, that grew into a passion to save the vanishing longleaf pine ecocystem in which she was raised.

Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

Kristen Iversen · 416 pages

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America

Thomas L. Friedman · 516 pages

Friedman's bestseller "The World Is Flat" has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now the author brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy.

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.

Unbowed

Wangari Maathai · 336 pages

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people's environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jail

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World

Paul Roberts · 400 pages

Petroleum is now so deeply entrenched in our economy, our politics, and our personal expectations that even modest efforts to phase it out are fought tooth and nail by the most powerful forces in the world: companies and governments that depend on oil revenues; the developing nations that see oil as the only means to industrial success; and a Western middle class that refuses to modify its energy-

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright · 240 pages

A clear, thoughtful, and wide-reaching exploration of complex systems, in theory and in practice. Meadows was a masterful and elegant writer and researcher, and an early voice in systems analysis at MIT and elsewhere. This book, completed from draft manuscript after Meadows' death, is both accessible and deeply thought-provoking. She connects the dots between careful descriptions of systems analys

The Orchard: A Memoir

Theresa Weir · 227 pages

The story of a street-smart city girl who must adapt to a new life on an apple farm after she falls in love with Adrian Curtis, the pride of a prominent local family whose lives and orchards are said to be cursed. Married after only three months, young Theresa finds life with Adrian on the farm far more difficult and dangerous than she expected. Rejected by her husband's family as an outsider, she

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

James Howard Kunstler · 313 pages

The Ecology of Commerce Revised Edition: A Declaration of Sustainability

Paul Hawken · 288 pages

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming

Bjorn Lomborg · 253 pages

A startling book that reshapes the debate about global warming and offers a moderate approach to meeting its challenges.Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered--the Kyoto Protocol, for example--have a staggering potential cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, but, ultimately, will have little impact on the world's temperature. He suggests that

Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat

Howard F. Lyman, Glen Merzer · 223 pages

Former cattle rancher Howard Lyman "blasts through the propaganda of the beef and dairy industries ... and exposes an animal-based diet as the primary cause of cancer, heart disease, and obesity in this country."--Jacket.