Hide 

It's time we moved from commuting to community and Superbia!, a MOTHER EARTH NEWS Book for Wiser Living, tells you how. An inspiring book about connecting with our neighbors, connecting our communities to the ecosystem, and connecting our everyday lives to our search for quality and joy.

The book is full of practical ideas for creating more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. It is about remaking suburban and urban neighborhoods to serve people better and to reduce human impact on the environment.

The authors first trace the history of the suburbs, showing how they fail to meet many peoples' needs. They then describe how existing neighborhoods can be transformed, offering cohousing and new urbanist communities as examples. The reader is then guided through the transformation of a fictitious neighborhood that adopts the authors' 31 steps. Ideas for the blossoming of the suburb are described in order of difficulty, from easy to boldest, including: the creation of a neighborhood newsletter to foster a sense of neighborhood identity and cooperation; regular community dinners, discussion groups, and babysitting co-ops; the removal of backyard fences to create park-like spaces for community play areas, or gardens; retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, and installing community energy systems.

Examples from all over North America and beyond provide real-life proof that citizen planners can create superbia! And the most comprehensive resource listing imaginable puts all the tools needed at your fingertips.

Well-illustrated and reader-friendly, Superbia! is written primarily for the millions who live in urban areas or existing suburbs. It will also be of major interest to environmentalists, planners, and all who want to create a more humane and nurturing lifestyle.

About the Contributors:

Dan Chiras is the father of two boys, and the author of over 20 books on environmental issues and sustainability. He teaches courses on renewable energy, green building and sustainability at Colorado College. His free time is spent mountain biking, camping, canoeing, kayaking, playing music, and gardening with his boys.

Dave Wann worked with the EPA for a decade and is now a writer and video producer. Widely published in magazines, he is coauthor of the successful book, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic and two other books about design, as well as six video programs on community.

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.

Hide 

This 184-page book explains the dangers of traditional cleaners. It provides illuminating statistics that illustrate how the chemicals found in almost every home are known or likely to cause a host of serious health problems.

Hide 

This 596-page book is packed with firsthand experiences, practical designs and data, plus great stories. It also provides the nitty-gritty details needed to fuel a revolution of small businesses prepared to engage in eco-friendly auto fuel production.

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.

Hide 

Hear David Blume extol the virtues of ethanol fuel in this two hour lecture, originally given to the Green Party of Nevada City, Calif. In this video, you'll learn the history of gasoline and how ethanol fuel has been attacked by the oil industry.

Hide 

The biotech industry’s claim that genetically modified foods are safe is shattered in this book by noted health expert, Jeffrey M. Smith. Nearly 65 health risks found in foods Americans eat daily are presented in easy-to-read two-page spreads. The left page is designed for the quick scanning reader; it includes bullets, illustrations and quotes. The right side offers fully referenced text, describing both research studies and theoretical risks.

The second half of Genetic Roulette explores why children are most at risk, how to avoid GM foods, false claims by biotech advocates, how industry research is rigged to avoid finding problems, why GM crops are not needed to feed the world, the economic losses associated with these crops and more.

Hide 

The benefits of straight vegetable oil (SVO) as an alternate fuel for diesel engines are many. SVO is cheap, carbon-neutral, uses a waste product, and does not depend upon centralized corporate infrastructure.

SVO is the only book available that explains exactly what you need to convert a diesel vehicle and how to do it properly. It provides readers the knowledge to sort through the different supply companies and online plans to find the best equipment and plans for their needs. While technical in nature, this fully illustrated book is very accessible. Each method is introduced and described in great detail. Illustrated, 226 pages.

Hide 

How To Build With Grid Beam is a MOTHER EARTH NEWS book that will help you become familiar with the modular, reusable building system that is fast, easy, affordable and virtually goof-proof.

Grid beam's modular pieces and bolt-together construction make the system fast and straightforward to work with. It has all the advantages of an industrial building system: standard, modular sizes; uniform materials; and interchangeable parts. Projects knock flat and are easy to transport. Since the pieces can be used over and over again, grid beam is easy both on your wallet and on the environment — the authors have been using some of their components for over 30 years.

How to Build with Grid Beam includes hundreds of photos of real projects built over a 60-year period, showing the many uses of grid beam, from shelves for college students to projects involving alternative energy. The versatility of grid beam is inspiring, for beginners, more experienced do-it-yourselfers, and innovators who will develop their own designs. Even school-age children can use grid beam to build simple projects.

About the Contributor(s):
Phil Jergenson is an innovator who built the first grid beam vehicle.

Richard Jergenson built his first grid beam project in 1977.

Wilma Keppel is a writer and editor who is also a welder, carpenter and grid beam builder.

Hide 

Green, Inc. is by a veteran journalist and former member of the global communications division of Conservation International. It is a first-person account of an eco warrior’s travails at the crossroads of the nonprofit and corporate worlds. MacDonald arrives at one of the world’s largest environmental groups with no small dose of idealism.

She is ready to dedicate herself to the fight for the planet’s remaining forestlands and endangered species. Quickly, however, she grows disillusioned by the group’s questionable liaisons with environmentally hostile corporations; the six-figure salaries of its leaders; and the lack of environmental ethos exhibited by her colleagues at their stylish Washington offices.

The book takes a hard look at corporate liaisons and examines the truth to claims that the country’s most prominent environmental groups have allowed themselves to be silenced by corporate money. While working inside one of the largest conservation groups in the world, the author noticed too often its sophisticated public relations machine focused on touting the virtues of corporate sponsors, spinning unrelentingly upbeat stories that distracted the public from looming environmental crisis. The book provides frank talk about allegations of “greenwashing.” The author has interviewed conservationists from the United States and several other countries, who express their concerns about the celebrity lifestyles and decision making by elite conservationists and corporate leaders.

But it not only focuses on the failures. The book also examines environmental-corporate partnerships that are bearing fruit, and reforms that could nurture a truly sustainable capitalism based on the premise that protecting natural resources can be good for both the environment and the profit margin.

Hide 

Earthworks are one of the easiest, least expensive, and most effective ways of passively harvesting and conserving multiple sources of water in the soil. Associated vegetation then pumps the harvested water back out in the form of beauty, food, shelter, wildlife habitat, and passive heating and cooling strategies, while controlling erosion, increasing soil fertility, reducing downstream flooding, and improving water and air quality.

Building on the information presented in Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands Volume 1, this book shows you how to select, place, size, construct, and plant your chosen water-harvesting earthworks. It presents detailed how-to information and variations of a diverse array of earthworks, including chapters on mulch, vegetation, and greywater recycling so you can customize the techniques to the unique requirements of your site.

Real life stories and examples permeate the book, including:

• How curb cuts redirect street runoff to passively irrigate flourishing shade trees planted along the street
• How check dams have helped create springs and perennial flows in once-dry creeks
• How infiltration basins are creating thriving rain-fed gardens
• How backyard greywater laundromats are turning "wastewater" into a resource growing food, beauty, and shade that builds community, and more
• How to create simple tools to read slope and water flow
• More than 225 illustrations and photographs

Hide 

The Salatin family farm, known as Polyface and located in Viriginia's Shenandoah Valley, has been featured in countless print, radio and video media as one of the nation's premier ecological farms. Exemplifying local food systems and imbedded community-based agriculture, the farm caught the attention of Michael Pollan in his runaway New York Times bestseller Omnivoire's Dilemma when Salatin refused to ship T-bone steaks to New York.

Behind the glitz, however, the farm struggles with a labyrinth of government regulations and cultural preceptions that terrorize the antidote to mad cows, avian influenza, and food fears. The solution is simple: allow freedom for traditional food growing and purchasing choices.

This book brings to life, with humor and verve, the everyday conflict between the entrenched industrial food system and the local artisanal neighbor-friendly farmer-entrepreneur.

Joel Salatin is also the author of: Pastured Poultry Profit$, Salad Bar Beef, You Can Farm, Family Friendly Farming, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven.