Book Description
The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that 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. This new edition includes 150 new full color illustrations and a special section in which John Seymour the father of the back to basics movement explains the philosophy of self-sufficiency and its power to transform lives and create communities. More relevant than ever in our high-tech world, The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the ultimate practical guide for realists and dreamers alike.
Customer Reviews:
Learn to live without fossil fuel.......2007-09-08
Great book for learning the basics of farm life. If you are getting started into the subject of sustainable living this is the perfect reference guide for you. You may require a companion book for plants more native to your climate (this book's perspective is in the UK). Insightful pictures and well written commentary make this book excel.
A well organized and complete guide.......2007-08-02
I was surprised to discover it is written sort of like a textbook. The more I look through it the more I like it. It's very practical and informative.
A Fun Coffee-Table Book.......2007-03-04
This book is great for just flipping through, day-dreaming about owning your own farm some day. Even for the current non-farmer, this book provides some practical tips on things almost anyone can do to be more self-sufficient. This book would be especially great for those who are intensive gardeners. But mostly this book provides ideas about certain aspects of self-sufficiency that the reader can then take and mold to their particular situation.
I'd like to address one point that some other reviewers have made in criticism of this book, namely that Seymour doesn't go into enough detail. Well, this is a coffee-table book that covers a fairly wide range of material. As such it can't (and shouldn't) go into deep detail. What Seymour does is get your imagination going. If you want to seriously implement some of Seymour's ideas you'll need to supplement this book with others that deal with the particular topic you're working on. To criticize Seymour for not going into detail on things is, I think, unfair.
This book would make a great gift for anyone who is interested in the self-sufficient lifestyle. I love flipping through the book whenever I feel like daydreaming about the fun work I hope to do some day on my own farm.
Extremely informative - Great reference.......2007-02-02
This book is an absolute necessity if you are going to be taking the plunge into self-sufficiency. It offers encouragement and guidance. It is realistic and full of traditional methods. It is a very handsome book, with lots of graphics and well written verse.
Simply cannot beat the price either. Simple, affordable, functional, and elegant - what self-sufficiency is all about.
Great Information.......2007-01-19
This book has a lot of information about self-sufficiency. It is great of anyone who is interested in becoming self-sufficient.
Average customer rating:
- Bathroom Read
- Great for anyone new to organics
- Getting the most from the status quo
- Good introduction, but not much more, and only if you have $
- The book title says it all.
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The Organic Suburbanite : An Environmentally Friendly Way to Live the American Dream
Warren Schultz
Manufacturer: Rodale Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0875968600 |
Book Description
Ask the tough questions. How can I cut down on energy use in my kitchen? What should I use to unclog the bathroom sink? Which cars create the least pollution? Should I or shouldn't I fertilize my lawn? These are just a few of the issues that families face every day in the suburbs. In this one-of-a-kind guide, author Warren Schultz points out the environmental and personal costs of traditional, toxic household practices and offers safe, natural, and easy alternatives.
Customer Reviews:
Bathroom Read.......2007-07-11
This book was average to me. It had a lot of good ideas. And I really like the retro 60's theme and design of the book. As a designer it was very creative. But it was kind of simple. Which might be a good thing on this topic. It's really more of a bathroom type book if you know what I mean. It's more of a picture book with each page having 3 or 4 sections on it. Basically it was a coffee table book that I used in the bathroom. But we won't tell the library that. If you live in the suburbs and want to think about living in a more sustainable, then it's a good intro.
Great for anyone new to organics.......2007-01-24
This is a great book for anyone who would like to start making a few environmentally-responsible changes in their life, but arent quite ready to jump into a full vegan-greenpeace style life. It gives ideas that allow you to help the environment (and your wallet), without really disrupting life as you know it. Everything from kitchen and bath, to outdoor maintenence, to organic methods to get rid of household pests.
Getting the most from the status quo.......2001-11-11
You're there. You have the family, the house, the yard, the car, the job that requires a commute. Given the way that a lot of us live, it can be very useful to have a check-list -- to do a walk-around of home and garden and see the latest thinking on how to minimize our impact on the environment. As someone who has been following these issues for years, I found it interesting that the evidence on some things seems to argue for different choices -- and that I had been way off on my thinking in other specifics. It's a pleasurable read -- the retro photos remind me that the suburbanization of America was rooted in a more innocent time, when few people had the foresight to see its results. What is beyond the scope of the book, but the more important question, is how we get to the point where we are creating not 20% less damage but 50% or even no damage at all -- and those are the "tough questions" that this book just does not ask.
Good introduction, but not much more, and only if you have $.......2001-10-11
This thin book is packed with information for someone new to "living lightly in the world." Broken out by living area -- bedrooms, bathrooms, laundry room, yards, etc. -- the book suggests alternative products and approaches to everyday living. Schultz takes on questions like "Should I Fertilize My Lawn?", "Cloth or Disposable Diapers?", and "Plastic or Paper Shopping Bags?" His writing is clear, concise, and his explanations easy to understand. He also includes a number of "recipes" for cleaning using vinegar, baking soda, and/or hydrogen peroxide, as well as a useful -- if brief -- list of sources.
Unfortunately, I was hoping for some new information here, but all I found was what has been said before in any number of places. Hang your clothes outside instead of using the dryer, use non-chlorine bleach, don't run your car's air conditioner, keep your tires inflated, don't drive an SUV.
One more significant problem I had with the majority of Schultz's suggestions: he gives no regard to cost. He suggests readers install front-loading washing machines and gas dryers, buy organic produce, buy only organic cotton clothing, and use organic lawn fertilizers. Not once does he note that all of these suggestions are considerably more expensive than their traditional counterparts. When buying a new washer, do you spend $500 on the traditional model, or $1,000 on the eco-friendly model with all the same features? Do you pony up the additional 30-50% for organic cotton clothing (plus shipping!)? How do you work with a grocery budget that is at least 30% more when you buy organic food and cleaning supplies? Organic living, by this standard, is a luxury not for the suburbanite on a budget. Several times he comments that energy savings will recoup the up-front expense, but this takes years in most cases.
What would be great to have seen is a book with more of his simple, effective, inexpensive solutions -- re-using and recycling products, low-cost/low-impact cleaning solutions, innovative solutions to everyday problems. If you're new to organic living and you have the money to spare, this is a great book to buy. Otherwise, save your money and use your head. Get it at the library.
The book title says it all........2001-08-23
This is a terrific book describing simple and manageable methods for improving the suburban family's opportunity to replace environmentally harmful chemical products with safer ones. It includes advice for gardening, washing anything and everything, home maintenance, repairs and shopping, It is extremely easy to read, very well laid out in an appealing format, friendly, concise, and doesn't preach or scold. This book is a wonderful tool for starting or maintaining an environmentally ethical suburban lifestyle without making you feel like a green-earth criminal.
Book Description
The newest edition to the Botanica's Gardening series, this authoritative encyclopedia covers all aspects of organic gardening. Botanica's Organic Gardening is a richly textured, stylish, visually stunning, and comprehensive guide to chemical-free gardening and living in harmony with the earth. Included is a series of four comprehensive, easy-to-use guides to growing vegetables, herbs, fruits, and ornamental flowering plants.
Customer Reviews:
A superbly organized and handy resource.......2003-02-13
Botanica's Organic Gardening: The Healthy Way To Live And Grow is an exhaustive, 608-page compendium of information, instruction, and advice specifically written to be completely accessible to organic gardeners of all skill and experience levels. Each page is densely packed with richly detailed information. A superbly organized and handy resource which is enhanced with a wealth of beautiful, full-color photographs, Botanica's Organic Gardening is very highly recommended for its coverage which includes everything from the basics of organic gardening to an extensive encyclopedia of edible plants.
Book Description
Science education is experiencing a revitalization, as it is recognized that science should be accessible to everyone, not just society’s future scientists. One way to make the study of science more substantive to the non-major is to require a laboratory component for all science courses. The subject of applied botany with its emphasis on the practical aspects of plant science, the authors believe, will be appealing to the non-major as it exemplifies how a basic science can be applied to problem solving. Laboratory Manual for Applied Botany will make students realize that the study of plants is relevant to their lives and that they can participate in the discovery process of science. Although the manual includes much of the basic plant anatomy found in standard botany manuals, it differs in taking a practical approach, examining those plants and plant products that have sustained or affected human society.
Average customer rating:
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Lives Intertwined: Relationships Between Plants and Animals (First Book)
Allen M. Young
Manufacturer: Franklin Watts
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: School & Library Binding
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ASIN: 0531202518 |
Book Description
Author Jack Sanders explores the lives and lore of more than 80 of North America's most popular wildflowers, describing the origins of their names, their places in history and literature, what uses ancient herbalists found for them, what uses they have now, where they grow, how they reproduce, and how to grow or transplant them.
Customer Reviews:
The world in a wildflower..........2000-06-13
Emerson knew... Audubon knew... Steichen knew... Jack Sanders knows... an exhaustive yet never exhausting catalogue of the world beneath our feet... that which we ignore... yet which means so much... Jack Sanders... Carl Sandburg... a poet of nature... The Big Eye appreciates the ones who notice...
The best book on wildflower folklore in or out of print.......1998-12-04
An indefatigable researcher, wildflower lover and newspaper editor Jack Sanders has compiled an extraordinary collection of information about North American wildflowers. Learn here about the naming of plants, their medicinal uses, and what the great naturalists of the past said about them. The book is gorgeous and the text is alive with Sanders's wit and wisdom. I recommend the book most enthusiastically to floraphiles, botanists, and naturalists.
Book Description
As our earliest ancestors migrated out of Africa, they encountered entirely new floras. By sampling these, they found plants that appeared to (and sometimes did) heal wounds, cure maladies, and ease troubled minds. This process of discovery continues today, as multinational pharmaceutical companies bioprospect in the globe's remaining wild places for the next tamoxifen or digitalis.
The gardener and botanist David Stuart tells the fascinating story of botanical medicine, revealing more than soothing balms and heroic cures. Most of the truly powerful and effective medicinal plants are double-edged, with a dark side to balance the light. They can heal or kill, calm or enslave, lift depression or summon our gods and monsters. Often the difference between these polar effects is a simple change in dosage.
Stuart chronicles the tale of how the herbal materia medica of healing and killing plants has sparked wars, helped establish intercontinental trade routes, and seeded fortunes. As plant species traveled the globe, their medicinal uses evolved over miles and through centuries. Plants once believed to be cure-alls are now considered too dangerous for use. Others, once so valuable that they sowed the wealth of empires, are merely spices on the kitchen shelf.
David Stuart recounts engrossing human stories too, not only of the scientists, explorers, and doctors who gathered, named, and prescribed these plants but also the shamans, magicians, and quacks who claimed to possess the ultimate herbal aphrodisiac or elixir.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating and informative read........2005-11-05
I absolutely loved this book! Not only was it interesting and compelling reading but the book was full of incredibly obscure but very enlightening information about the usage history of the plants covered. Mr. Stuart also gave (in the majority of instances) the specific botanical names of the plants and other related species which is rare in non-scientific "History of Plants" books. The selection of illustrations was absolutely superb.
The only negative that I have about this book is that Mr. Stuart frequently listed vague references to scientific "studies" that proved his points about certain plants but there was no information, footnoted or otherwise, to definitively identitify these "studies". He also had a few scattered references to plants mentioned in unspecified publications. Who did these studies and who printed these stories? In a book of this nature, I expect to have facts and sources laid out a bit more thoroughly.
I still gave this book FIVE STARS because it was so much fun to read. I have lots of other books with which to cross reference and confirm some of the more vague references so I wasn't particularly distressed by the oversight although, in my view, if you are going to thoroughly research and document some things, then you should thoroughly research and document everything.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Piqued my interest, now I want to know even more . . . . .......2005-01-09
"Dangerous Garden" is an EXCELLENT book on the history of plants and how humans interact with plants, a topic that I stumbled onto only about a couple of years ago. The book is broken up into eight chapters that cover about 200 pages. There are lots of pictures and color plates, so each chapter is almost a stand-alone section that is just the right length to be read over an afternoon or spread out over a couple of nights at bedtime.
Each chapter covers a category of use or effect that humans have tried to get out of plants. The chapters are:
- The Great Afflictions, covering plants thought to affect diseases such as bubonic plague, malaria and leprosy.
- The Vital Organs, covering plants thought to affect vital organs such as the heart, stomach, etc.
- The Flight from Pain, or the search for pain-relievers, with an extensive section on opium.
- Chasing Venus, which is kind of self-explanatory.
- The Killing Plants, very self-explanatory.
- The Seven Ages of Man, meaning plants that are supposed to prolong life, maintain a youthful appearance, or otherwise slow the passage of time.
- The Mind, or plants that affect the mind and have been both revered and demonized because of it, including marijuana, cocaine, tobacco and qat.
- The Mysteries of the Gods, which covers plants used in religious and shamanic ceremonies, such as peyote.
The book is definitely not a lightweight and people looking for serious information will find a lot of worth. Plants are referred to both by their common name and their scientific names and the index covers both types of terms as well. The Bibliography includes books from 1516 to the 1990s, and the Author's Acknowledgments on the last page list a number of good websites as well.
Stuart discusses the historical uses of various plants and how some plants have gone from being cure-alls in the past to being either banned or sold in the grocery-store spice aisle now. He spends a lot of time on the concept of Janus plants, which are "two-faced" plants, meaning they can both harm and heal, and he also discusses fads in medicine, including a long period of time in the middle ages where if a plant had a visible effect it was thought to be better than one that didn't have a visible effect, so plants that made people sweaty, feverish, nauseous, sleepy, etc. were prescribed in amounts that are horrifying by today's standards.
Some authors talk down to readers, but this author absolutely does not and will jump from discussion of which 19th-century herbal contained which plant to discussion of the exact chemical names of the active alkaloids in a plant, if they are unknown than which other known alkaloids do they resemble, and what current research is being done and current uses and/or speculation.
There are also numerous little facts sprinkled here and there throughout the book which the author clearly can't spend much time on because of space but which are equally fascinating in themselves, such as:
- (pg 188) Morning glory has LSD-like components that have been much studied and have variable effects in mice, rabbits and humans, with some people feeling little effect and other getting a full "trip", although often an unpleasant one.
- (pgs 7-8) Rhubarb was once thought to be an aphrodisiac by the Romans and a cure for a form of malaria by medieval herbalists; until the mid-1500s it was only available to Europe as imported dried roots.
- (pgs 69-70) There was once a great hospital atop Soutra Hill in Scotland, south of Edinburgh, its first charter dated from 1108 (!) and it reached its epogee in 1462 and was finally closed in the 1500s, razed by the late 1800s and its drains, cesspits and middens began to be excavated in the 1980s.
I could go on for pages more, but I will digress. In short, if you like history and if you like plants, you'll probably like this book.
Book Description
Contrary gardener Gene Logsdon has found an imaginative way to introduce gardeners to a more total enjoyment of nature--fauna as well as flora. What gardeners consider pests (rabbits devouring petunias, deer browsing the morning glories), Logsdon views as just more of nature's wonders, and teaches us, intimately and lyrically, to live together with them in harmony. If you're not yet familiar with the wonderful musings of Gene Logsdon, this is a perfect introduction.
Customer Reviews:
Disappointed.......2000-04-21
I appreciate Mr.Logsdon's writing abililty. In fact, I was enjoying the book immensely until I got to the part about killing the raccoon, which happens to be the animal I wanted to learn to get along with. I think the title is very misleading. I wanted to know how to get along with my backyard neighbors, and not by killing them. To top it all, he actually gave recipes for raccoon dishes. Like I said, it was quite enjoyable until this part, but I feel there are much more pleasant ways to get along with our backyard neighbors. I don't offend easily, but this title does not fit the entire contents of the book.
Best if sipped like fine, Kentucky bourbon.......1999-11-19
Gene does a fine job wrestling with this immense topic. As a house owner on the remotest fringe of suburbia, I can attest to the accuracy of the observations in his book.
Wildlife in the Garden has many characteristics in common with Gene's other writing. Some of the most enjoyable lines are his observations on human nature. Another characteristic of Gene's writing is the density. He packs many observations, facts, vignettes in each essay. This is not pulp fiction that you can bolt down in an afternoon. It is best taken in small bites and savored. This book is likely to have a long tenure in our private Imhof memorial library.
Lest you think the book is perfect (By the way Gene, thanks for the check) I do have a few *minor* quibbles.
A bibliography would have been a fine addition.
Some of the material seems to be a bit elementary. Many people who are starting to landscape for wildlife want a paint-by-numbers approach. Gene probably had to do that to serve their needs.
Gene tends to be a bit emphatic about The Right Way To Do Things, but that will only bother the feeble-minded. (I won't let it bother me. I won't let it bother me. I won't let it bother me.)
This book was first published in 1983. Gene's writing style has changed in that time. The book reads more smoothly when taken in sips and nibbles. But that is perfectly OK because this is the kind of book that wants to be read slowly.
Let me emphasize that these are *minor* quibbles and I enjoyed the book.
(Final note for those who are hooked up to public sewerage, the septic tank was invented by an engineer named Imhof)
Average customer rating:
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Wild Lives: Wild Lives (Guinness World Records)
Dina Anastasio , and
Ryan Herndon
Manufacturer: Scholastic Inc.
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Incredible Collection (Guinness World Records: Top 40)
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Ripley's Special Edition 2007 (Ripley's Believe It Or Not Special Edition)
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Guinness World Records 2007 (Guinness World Records)
ASIN: 0439745853 |
Book Description
GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS: WILD LIVES presents the world's most awesome records from the animal and plant kingdoms. Take a close-up look at real insects, reptiles, vegetables and minerals, such as:
· The world's most dangerous bird
· The world's driest place
· The world's smelliest flower
· The world's strangest insect defense system
· The world's tallest waterfall
· And much more
What are nature's biggest, smallest, loudest, tallest, deadliest, and smelliest?
Read GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS: WILD LIVES to find out!
Books:
- The Trading Athlete: Winning the Mental Game of Online Trading
- The Ultimate Ride
- Treat Your Own Rotator Cuff
- Trout of the World
- U.S. Army Map Reading and Land Navigation Handbook (U.S. Army)
- Weather Flying
- Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod
- Wooden
- Xeriscape Gardening: Water Conservation for the American Landscape
- A Field Guide to Eastern Trees (Peterson Field Guides)
Books Index
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