There are a great many books that can help you in your pursuit to lead a greener and healthier life. Below are a some that members of the group have read and recommend. If you have found a great “green living” book, email me at
sharon.tepe@fuse.net and I will add it to the list.
Eating
This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Housewife
by Joan Dye Gussow
Gussow discusses the joys and challenges of growing organic produce in her own New York garden.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver recounts the year her family attempted to eat only what they could grow on their farm in Virginia or buy from local sources.
Harvest for Hope
by Jane Goodall
Goodall scrutinizes human eating behaviors, and the colossal food industries that force-feed some cultures' self-destructive habits for mass consumption.
Gardening
Basic Composting
by Eric Ebeling, Carl Hursh Patti Olenick
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long by
Eliot Coleman
If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you. Eliot Coleman shows how North American gardeners can successfully raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat.
Great Green Book of Garden Secrets
by Jerry Baker
Gardeners can turn a bare plot into a beautiful paradise with the 1,050 miracle-working solutions, tonics, and tricks collected in this power-packed garden resource.
Rodale's Vegetable Garden Problem Solver by Fern Marshall Bradley
With a wealth of information and tested advice, this problem-solving treasure gives gardeners every-thing they need to do battle with garden pests, diseases, and weeds—with safe, natural solutions.
The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools & Techniques for the Home & Market Gardener
by Eliot Coleman
Revised
and expanded is a new edition of a classic gardening guide. Here master grower Coleman presents a simple, effective formula for growing quality organic vegetables, updating details on marketing harvests and using small-scale equipment.
Worms Eat my
Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System
by Mary Appelhof
General
Earth in the Balance
by Al Gore
Gore takes a broader approach, focusing on the threats that everyday choices pose to our climate, water, soil, and diversity of plant and animal life.
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder
by Richard Louv
Gathering thoughts from parents, teachers, researchers, environmentalists and other concerned parties, Louv argues for a return to an awareness of and appreciation for the natural world.
One Makes the Difference
by Julia Butterfly
Hill
Environmental activist and writer Hill, whose The Legacy of Luna recorded her attempt to save a redwood forest by living in a tree for two years, now offers practical tips for environmentally sound living.
Planting Green Roof and Living Walls
by Nigel Dunnett and Noel Kingsbury
This sourcebook brings together a fascinating amount of data, covering the actual logistics of how to implement plantings on roofs and building facades. Dunnett and Kingsbury look at examples of ornamental projects while stressing the concept's solid link to the environment.
The Art of the Commonplace—The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
by Wendell Berry
Writer and native Kentucky farmer, Berry has thoughtfully and articulately shown how the current consumer-based, profit-driven industrial society not only destroys our natural world but also increasingly harms our social and personal well-being
The Heat Is On
by Ross Gelbspan
This book not only brings home the imminence of climate change but also examines the campaign of deception by big coal and big oil that is keeping the issue off the public agenda.
Twilight in the Desert by Matthew Simmons
Investment banker Simmons offers a detailed description of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S and our long-standing dependence upon Saudi oil.
Lost Mountain by Erik Reese
Learn about the impacts of Mountain Top Removal. The Kentucky-born author, who canoed clean Appalachian rivers as a youth, has written an impassioned account of a business rife with industrial greed, devious corporate ownership and unenforced environmental laws.
Personal Care
Organic Body Care Recipes by Stephanie Tourles
Stephanie Tourles offers a better solution to everyone frustrated with the endless cycle of expensive, synthetic, famous-name cosmetics that often fall short of expectations. Take control of beauty treatments with homemade products that use safe, nourishing ingredients to pamper the body and soothe the senses.
Reduce/Re-use/Recycle
50 Simple Things You Can do to Save the Earth by the Earth Works Group
I have a copy of this printed in 1989. It is still a great read. There is a 2008 version out with a completely different table of contents. I have not read this version.
Self Sufficiency
Gaia’s Garden
by Toby Hemenway
Hemenway, a permaculture expert and associate editor of The Permaculture Activist, explains how gardens can function as ecosystems, describes the basic parts of an ecological garden (soil, water, plants, and animals), and shows how to create backyard ecosystems through guilds.
The Self-Sufficient Life and how to live it
by John Seymour & Deidre Headon
This teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan
The Backyard Homestead shows you how to grow vegetables and fruits; keep bees; raise chickens, goats, or even a cow. When the harvest is in, you'll learn how to cook, preserve, cure, brew, or pickle the fruits of your labor.
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