After specializing in minimalism and zero/low-waste in luxury residential design, Lori Dennis Inc. was tapped to author two books on Green Interior Design. The mission is to make sustainable design and living fun and accessible. Both Lori Dennis and Courtney Porter discovered their passions for design at an early age, spawned from resourcefulness and creative resstaint. Having lived in NYC and LA, Lori and Courtney have a love of cities, community, and the great outdoors.
From the hosts of HGTV’s Backyard Envy, Take It Outside delves into one of our favorite topics: outdoor design and indoor-outdoor living. What this book does better than any other on the topic is connect the interiors to the exteriors. That cohesion is something we really value, and fortunately, it would seem, so do consumers. Requests for outdoor living rooms and kitchens have been trending upwards for the past several years.
From the hosts of Bravo's Backyard Envy comes a beautifully photographed guide to converting your outdoor space into an enviable oasis, whether you have a backyard, brownstone patio, or three-season porch.
Dubbed the "plantfluencers" by the New York Times, Mel Brasier, Garrett Magee, and James DeSantis, owners of the Manscapers landscaping company, do more than plant, mulch, and manicure a garden; they look at the space just as interior designers do a room, considering the aesthetics and the way people live in it. Now they show you how to apply familiar interior design principles to your outdoors, including:
I spent the first decade of my journalistic career focused on calamity, malevolence, and suffering. By my early thirties, I wasn’t just struggling to feel happy about the world — I was struggling to feel anything at all. It was an encounter with awe — a visit to an aspen colony in central Utah that is the world’s largest known singular organism — that jarred me from this increasingly colorless world. As an author, teacher, researcher, and radio host, I strive to connect others with a sense of wonder — and I feel very fortunate that so many other science communicators continually leave me feeling awestruck for this amazing world.
It would be easy to pass off this work as a book about the environment for Muslims. And I suppose it is that—an Islamic analog for the growing list of books that implore Christians to view environmental stewardship as an essential tenet of their faith, from authors like Sandra Richter and Fletcher Harper.
Abdul-Matin's work struck me in another way: As an expanding aperture into the faith of billions of people across this planet. Reading it was reminiscent of my first experience with Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh, which similarly offered me an accessible entryway to a religion I'd previously known very little about, and which permitted me to then dive deeper through other, more challenging works. I read Hoff's book for the first time as a teen-aged sailor onboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, and I have read it several times since. I am certain that…
A Muslim environmentalist explores the fascinating intersection of environmentalism and Islam.
Muslims are compelled by their religion to praise the Creator and to care for their community. But what is not widely known is that there are deep and long-standing connections between Islamic teachings and environmentalism. In this groundbreaking book, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin draws on research, scripture, and interviews with Muslim Americans to trace Islam’s preoccupation with humankind’s collective role as stewards of the Earth.
Abdul-Matin points out that the Prophet Muhammad declared “the Earth is a mosque.” Using the concept of Deen, which means “path” or “way” in Arabic, Abdul-Matin…
I am an environmental scientist with over 25 years experience working on climate change and sustainability. 20 of those years were spent working internationally on environmental policy in developing countries, advising the World Bank and the OECD, and being a climate change negotiator in the UN. I am a thought leader who advised the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and The Elders Foundation. In 2018 I co-founded my business, Change by Degrees, which works with people and organisations to transform business for good. I am passionate about fairness between people and between people and the planet and enjoy communicating in a hopeful and positive way about the future we can choose.
Colm describes his book as a ‘hypocrite’s guide to saving the planet’ and he is very honest about the contradictions in his own life as he tries to live sustainably.
He uses humour and storytelling to engage the reader and to help all of us feel overcome by the scale of the climate challenge to give ourselves a break and keep on going.
Bestselling author Colm O'Regan is a worrier. A professional one. Caution is his watchword. Risk aversion is his love language. Now Colm is grappling with the biggest worry of all: the whole 'planet being on fire' thing and how exactly we can help.
Don't worry, this isn't a book telling you how to live off the grid and make your own planet-friendly soap from woodlice (that's the sequel). Instead, Climate Worrier is about the journey, about trying (and often failing) to be part of the solution to the big issues, while not despairing at the endless hypocrisies that come from…
I like to say I'm a born-again pedestrian. After a childhood in car-friendly Southern California, I moved first to the San Francisco Bay Area and then to Montreal. There I discovered the pleasures of living in walkable cities, and over the years I've explored them in a series of books about people, nature, and urban spaces in which the problems of spread-out, concrete-heavy cities take a front-row seat. The impact of the way we've built our cities over the last 100 years is becoming apparent, as carbon dioxide rises, driving climate changes. We must change the way we live, and the books I suggest give some insights about what to do and what not to do.
David Owen cares about cities and climate change, but the solution he suggests may seem counter-intuitive. At least it seemed so to me, until I began to look around at my own relatively sustainable city, Montreal. Owen argues that dense cities are really more environmentally friendly than spread out ones, and if we're going to get a handle on carbon emissions we are going to have to live closer together. He doesn't advocate high rises all over as Le Corbusiier would, but a mixture of housing heights tied to effective public transportation. He presents workable ideas that can change the world.
In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York, New York. Most Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares, as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. Yet residents of compact urban centers, Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. They live in smaller spaces, discard less trash, and, most important of all, spend far less time in automobiles. Residents of Manhattan- the most densely populated place in…
Blame it on the issues of National Geographicand books on ancient mythology I devoured as a child or my family’s obsession with Frontier House, but I’ve always been one of those people who felt misplaced in time—longing to live a life more immersed in the natural world. That yearning has only grown stronger as the world has rapidly technologized and globalized since my childhood. Luckily, I’ve been able to channel it into some fascinating work as a journalist and author writing about the environment, food systems (I’m also a lifelong foodie with a passion for traditional foods), and cultural history.
My love of this book started out with its quirky cover photo. It’s slightly misleading because the bookisn’t about women’s place in the home; it’s about how we all have lost our sense of purpose, meaning, and self—and our human creativity—by living in a consumerist society that trades autonomy for endless want.
The first half is my favorite. Hayes delves into the shared-by-the-sexes history of homemaking in Medieval Europe and then unpacks the path to relentless productivity in the post-industrial age. I wish I had known about this book when my first daughter was born. I would have felt less alone in my frustration at the unfairness of modern motherhood, and empowered earlier to make more intentional life choices.
Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.
In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires.Radical Homemakers is about men and women across the U.S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has…
Holly Worton is an author, podcaster, and speaker. She writes nonfiction books about her adventures to inspire people to get outdoors and reconnect with nature so they can reconnect with themselves. Holly enjoys spending time outdoors, walking and running long-distance trails, and exploring Britain's sacred sites. Travel is important to her: she's originally from California and now lives in England, but has also lived in Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. Holly is a member of the Druid order OBOD, and nature connection is an important part of her spirituality.
Even if you aren’t interested in becoming fully self-sufficient, this book is an eye-opening and exciting look at the possibilities available to us. Growing our own food (even some of it) can help us to reconnect with nature. It’s also very empowering.
Whether you want to live off the grid in a fully self-sufficient way, or just turn your backyard into your own small homestead, here is advice on backyard chicken care, how to plant a no-till garden that heals the soil, composting, canning, and much more.
The Weekend Homesteader is organized by month-so whether it's January or June you'll find exciting, quick-to-do projects that allow you to start your own homestead without getting overwhelmed. If you need to fit homesteading into a few hours each weekend and would like to have fun while doing it, these projects will be right up…
Blame it on the issues of National Geographicand books on ancient mythology I devoured as a child or my family’s obsession with Frontier House, but I’ve always been one of those people who felt misplaced in time—longing to live a life more immersed in the natural world. That yearning has only grown stronger as the world has rapidly technologized and globalized since my childhood. Luckily, I’ve been able to channel it into some fascinating work as a journalist and author writing about the environment, food systems (I’m also a lifelong foodie with a passion for traditional foods), and cultural history.
I read this in the early days of my fantasizing about off-grid living, and I found a true kindred spirit in Sundeen and the remarkable new-gen back-to-the-land pioneers he followed to write the three deep-dive stories that form this beautiful book.
Sundeen is a master of the immersive journalism genre in the vein of Jon Krakauer or Sebastian Junger and a true writer’s writer (i.e., never in love with the sound of his own voice, yet blows you away with the choiceness and poignancy of his storytelling). That this book isn’t yet more widely known is astonishing.
“An in-depth and compelling account of diverse Americans living off the grid.” —Los Angeles Times
The radical search for the simple life in today’s America.
On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to…
I'm fascinated by how our world operates, from the macro-level to the microlevel and metaphysics. It creates more depth and makes life infinitely colorful and exciting, even in the most mundane things. I've been studying personal development and spirituality for almost 20 years now, and I find the journey of growth and becoming to be rewarding. Books that help me expand my horizon and think differently enable this process, and I find that to be exciting.
For anyone growing up in western culture, you’ve probably have heard of the story of The Wizard of Oz or are familiar with pieces of it. The excellent storyteller and teacher, Jean Houston, whom I’ve had the opportunity to study with and a good friend of my dear mentor, Mary Morrissey, shares insights that make this story personal. It is a story of transformation, of Dorothy traversing a new land, conquering her adversaries, and finally discovery the path home by tapping her feet together three times. Why, she asked the good witch why she wasn’t just told that in the beginning, the good witch’s response was, “because you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.” Maybe the journey is part of the process that enables us to build the awareness to open our doors.
Take the journey of a lifetime with Human Potential visionary Jean Houston as she guides you through mythic Oz to become an essential human for the new world.
Learn how to expand your mind, open your heart, and find the courage to connect with your own life journey with The Wizard of Us, an accessible guide to help you envision the world as you choose to create it.
With specific and easily understandable exercises and epiphanies, The Wizard of Us harkens to the classic tale and defines the hero’s journey through the skills and internal qualities that live within each…
I’ve been a chronicler of nature and life in our organic vineyard for nearly two decades. In that time, I have seen the climate crisis accelerate and create increasing weather extremes with devastating consequences for our crops. This led me to dive deep into understanding the climate crisis and how we can solve it. I’ve written four books about the transformation of our organic farm. In my latest, I explore how we are already impacted by climate change and how things like biodiversity can help us address it. If you are unsure of where to start, these books will help you understand why action is necessary and the best way for you to get involved.
Of all the books I have read on the Climate Crisis, this is the clearest about what to do and an easy, good read.
Dr. Peter Kalmus sees the gravity of the climate crisis up close every day in his work as a scientist studying clouds and climate change at NASA, but his book is not a technical treatise. Faced with alarming changes in the earth’s systems created by human activity, he realizes he must do something. He cannot sit back and watch the slow-motion destruction of our life support system, our biosphere. He explains exactly what we are up against, but his solutions are not high-tech. He starts by bicycling, growing food, meditating, and making other simple changes to his life. This transformation creates a more satisfying and joyful life for him and his family.
Modern society’s frantic rush for consumption harms the biosphere and damages our long-term happiness,…
Life on 1/10th the fossil fuels turns out to be awesome.
We all want to be happy. Yet as we consume ever more in a frantic bid for happiness, global warming worsens.
Alarmed by drastic changes now occurring in the Earth's climate 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.
I
was hooked from the very first page, when the author reports a brief
conversation with a top-of-the-heap oil-man who thought the idea of a
philosophical book about food ridiculous. Sitopia
asks how the lessons learned from the
past might be applied to the way we might live now.
Her first book, Hungry City, is a panoramic sweep of human history from hunter-gatherer cave-dwellers to urban sprawl, bringing an architect's understanding of the development of cities. The first book established
the author's reputation as philosopher, cultural historian, and prizewinning food writer.
Booksellers don't know where to put her on the shelves. If Hungry City asks the questions, Sitopia (a
made-up word from the Greek for food + place) looks for the answers.
This book is intelligent
and brave - and she writes like a dream.
