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This new edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings together the Nearings' classic guides to the theory and practice of rural homesteading.

Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For more than 30 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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A well-organized, easy-to-understand review of renewable home-heating options that includes everything you need to know about passive and active solar systems, wood and pellet stoves, masonry heaters and air- and ground- source heat pumps.

Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For more than 30 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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This is the first book to describe in depth the timber framing methods used by most contractors, framers and owner-builders — methods that use modern metal fasteners, special screws, and commonsense building principles to create post and beam structures in much less time. The book includes everything an owner-builder needs to know about building strong and beautiful structural frames from heavy timbers.

Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For more than 30 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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This is THE definitive book on wind energy if you're considering your own system or investing in a wind company. This new edition includes successful case studies, sources for new and used equipment, and hundreds of color photographs and illustrations.

Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For more than 30 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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Building on the enormous success of the original Shelter, Lloyd Kahn continues his odyssey of finding and exploring the most magnificent and unusual hand-built houses in existence. Among the intriguing domiciles described in Home Work are a Japanese-style stilt house accessible only by a cable across a river; a stone house in a South African valley whose roof serves as a baboon trampoline; and a bottle house in the Nevada desert.

More than 1,500 photos illustrate various innovative architectural styles and natural building materials that have gained popularity in the last two decades such as cob, papercrete, bamboo, adobe, strawbale, timber framing, and earthbags. If you love fine, fun and/or funky buildings, you will want to own this splendid book by Lloyd Kahn.

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More than 70% of Americans cannot afford to own a code-enforced, contractor-built home. This has led to widespread interest in using natural materials — straw, cob and earth — for building homes and other buildings that are inexpensive, and that rely largely on labor rather than expensive and often environmentally-damaging outsourced materials.

Earthbag Building, a MOTHER EARTH NEWS Book for Wiser Living, is the first comprehensive guide to all the tools, tricks and techniques for building with bags filled with earth — or earthbags. Having been introduced to sandbag construction by the renowned Nader Khalili in 1993, the authors developed this "Flexible Form Rammed Earth Technique" over the last decade. Its reliable method for constructing homes, outbuildings, garden walls and much more, this enduring, tree-free architecture can also be used to create arched and domed structures of great beauty — in any region, and at home, in developing countries, or in emergency relief work.

This fully-illustrated guide first discusses the many merits of earthbag construction, and then leads the reader through the key elements of an earthbag building:

• Special design considerations
• Foundations, walls, and floors
• Electrical, plumbing, and shelving
• Lintels, windows and door installations
• Roofs, arches and domes
• Exterior and interior plasters

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A perfect leek from France. Flavorful zucchini from Italy. An infamous potato from Ireland, and a humble lentil from Ethiopia. 100 VEGETABLES offers a veritable cornucopia of vegetables and stories from around the world — from Argentina to Zimbabwe, from Australia to the United States. William Woys Weaver — veggie connoisseur, gardener, and historian — tomatoes, greens, and a whole lot more.

Not every carrot is the same. All beans aren't equal. Take the Petaluma Gold Rush bean, a rugged legume, grown for over 150 years and brought to California by an American whaler from Peru. Or the violet carrot, which the Greeks brought back from India following the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Mixing history, culinary suggestions, practical information and personal anecdotes, William Woys Weaver introduces us to unusual heirloom vegetables and enriching our knowledge of common favorites. He provides answers to general questions and presents lively portraits of 100 vegetable varieties.

Organized alphabetically by common name, this 289-page book includes beautifully detailed drawings throughout, plus a helpful appendix of seed resources.

About the author:

William Woys Weaver is an organic gardener, food historian, and author of eight books — including Heirloom Vegetable Gardening and Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking, both of which received Julia Child awards for food reference. He and his kitchen garden have been the subject of articles in the New York Times, Country Home, the Chicago Tribune, and Food Arts. He lives in Devon, Pennsylvania, where he maintains an 1830s-style garden, featuring some three thousand varieties of heirloom vegetables, flowers, and herbs.

Recommended product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For nearly 40 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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Straw bale houses are easy to build, affordable, super energy efficient, environmentally friendly, attractive, and can be designed to match the builder's personal space needs, esthetics, and budget. Despite mushrooming interest in the technique, however, most straw bale books focus on "selling" the dream of straw-bale building, but don't adequately address the most critical issues faced by bale house builders. Moreover, since many developments in this field are recent, few books are completely up to date with the latest techniques.

More Straw Bale Building, a MOTHER EARTH NEWS Book for Wiser Living, is designed to fill this gap. A completely rewritten edition of the 20,000-copy best-selling original, it leads the potential builder through the entire process of building a bale structure, tackling all the practical issues: finding and choosing bales; developing sound building plans; roofing; electrical, plumbing, and heating systems; building code compliance; and special concerns for builders in northern climates. New material includes:

• more extensive sections on electric wiring and plumbing
• updated sections on bale finishes and finishing
• a section on prefabricated straw bale walls
• a wider selection of case studies, photographs and illustrations
• a section on common mistakes
• budgeting for low-, medium- and high-cost projects
• new testing data that is in no other straw bale book

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Structural insulated panels are solid, one-piece structural components that can be used in walls, floors and roofs. They produce a structurally superior, better-insulated, faster-to-erect house.

Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is recommending books to its readers. For more than 30 years, MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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If you're considering a solar or wind system for your home or business, this book is a valuable resource. The authors explain how installing a solar or wind system is an economically attractive and environmentally responsible option.

From Vermont to California homeowners are plugging in to a hot new idea — reducing or eliminating their electric bills by using free energy from the sun and wind. In this straight-talking new book, authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt tell other grid-connected homeowners how to capture alternative energy and put it to use in their home.

Renewable energy is going mainstream, thanks to affordable new technologies with rebates and incentives from many states. Today more and more homeowners believe that installing a home RE system is the economically-attractive and environmentally-responsible thing to do. Whether they install a solar/wind system to benefit their checkbooks or to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, they also enjoy the added independence of a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

The authors know firsthand how these systems work: Rex Ewing, author of Power With Nature, has lived off-the-grid in the Colorado Rockies since 1999; and Doug Pratt, the former technical editor of the Solar Living Sourcebook, lives in a grid-tied home in northern California, and has been on the front lines of the renewable energy revolution since 1985.

The book covers battery back-up versus non-battery systems, as well as equipment needed and installation considerations. Other topics include legal and safety issues, incentives/rebates, and permits and paperwork. An extensive appendix of resources, state energy offices, system sizing worksheets, and much more turns this 160 page book filled with over 120 photos and illustrations into a must-have book for anyone interested in exploring their power options.

Contents:

• Why invest in renewable energy for your home?
• Is it legal and safe?
• How solar electricity works
• Batteries or not?
• Sizing your system
• Got Wind?
• What does it cost?
• Any financial help out there?
• Permits & Paperwork
• The Nuts & Bolts: what to look for, what to avoid
• Who does the installation?
• Appendix: manufacturers, web resources, state energy, offices, sizing worksheets, glossary and more