Non-fiction Books

This is our ongoing reading list, continually in progress and open to recommendations! We have not read all of them yet... any thoughts on ones you have read or are pining to would be great. It's so nice to talk about books.


ADVENTURE

1. Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp - Gwen Roland
   
2. The Bull Fighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People - Susan Orlean
   
3. Cross Country - Robert Sullivan
4. Death in the Everglades: The Murder of Guy Bradley, America's First Martyr to Environmentalism - Stuart B. McIver
   
5. Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
   
6. The Legacy of Luna - Julia Butterfly Hill
7. The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession - Susan Orlean
8. My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere - Susan Orlean
   
9. Rowing to Latitude: Journey's Along the Arctic's Edge - Jill Fredston
10. Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Southeast Asia - Sy Montgomery
11. Small Places - Thomas H. Rawls
12. Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches - Jill Fredston
13. The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise - Michael Grunwald
14. The Tapir's Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest - Elizabteh Royte
15. This Cold Heaven - Gretel Ehrlich
16. Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
17. A Whale Hunt - Robert Sullivan

COB + HOME

1. Building with Cob : a step-by-step guide - Adam Weismann Katy Bryce
2. The Hand-Sculpted House - Evans, Smiley and Smith of The Cob Cottage Co.
   
3. Home Work - Lloyd Kahn
4. Shelter - Lloyd Kahn
5. The Cob Builders Handbook - Becky Bee
6. Rocket Mass Heaters - Ianto and Jackson
   

COMPOST

1. Composting Toilet System Book: A Practical Guide to Choosing, Planning and Maintaining Composting Toilet Systems - David Del Porto Carol Steinfeld
2. Create an Oasis With Greywater: Your Complete Guide to Choosing, Building and Using Greywater Systems - Art Ludwig
3. Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator: Edible Essays on City Farming - Spring Gillard
   
4. The Humanure Handbook - Joseph Jenkins
5. Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants - Carol Steinfeld
6. Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling - Carol Steinfeld David Del Porto
7. Worms Eat My Garbage - Mary Appelhof

EQUALITY

1. The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family - Dan Savage
2. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage - Stephanie Coontz
3. Thinking in Pictures - Temple Grandin
4. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap - Stephanie Coontz
5. The Way We Really Are: Ending the War Over America's Changing Families - Stephanie Coontz
6. Why Marriage?: The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality - George Chauncey

FOOD + OTHER ANIMALS

1. Animals in Translation - Temple Grandin
2. The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan
3. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal - Eric Schlosser
4. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan
5. Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey. The Sweet Liquid Gold That Seduced the World - Holley Bishop

GOVERNMENTS

1. An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire - Arundhati Roy
   
2. The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq - George Packer
   
3. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream - Barak Obama
4. The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile - Conversations with Arundhati Roy, Interviews by David Barsamian
   
5. The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future - Bill McKibben
6. 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right - Earthworks Group
7. 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change - MoveOn.org
8. Fighting Words: A Toolkit for Combating the Religious Right - Robin Morgan
9. Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 - Joan Didion
10. How the Republicans Stole Christmas: The Republican Party's Declared Monopoly on Religion and What Democrats Can Do to Take It Back - Bill Press
11. The Prince - Machiavelli
12. Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken
13. 9-11 - Noam Chomsky
    
14. Reefer Madness - Eric Schlosser
15. The Truth - Al Franken
16. Welcome to Doomsday - Bill Moyers

HOMESTEAD

1. Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende
2. Continuing the Good Life: Half a Century of Homesteading - Helen Scott Nearing
3. Country Wisdom Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land - Editors of Storey Books
4. The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book - Carla Emery
5. Foxfire Series
6. Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture - Toby Hemenway & John Todd
7. Good Dirt - flower couple
8. The Good, Good Pig - Sy Montgomery
9. The Greenhouse Gardener - Anne Swithinbank
10. Growing Herbs: For the Maritime Northwest Gardener - Mary Preus
11. Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Natural Gardening - Steve Solomon (Territorial Seed Co.)
12. Herbal tea gardens : 22 plans for your enjoyment well-being / Marietta Marshall Marcin
13. Herbs for sale : growing and marketing herbs, herbal products, and herbal know-how / Lee Sturdivant
14. Homesteading Adventures: A Guide for Doers and Dreamers - Sue Robishaw
15. Introduction to Permaculture - Bill Mollison
    
16. Lasagna Gardening - Patricia Lanza
17. Living the Good Life - Helen Scott Nearing
18. New book of herbs - Jekka McVicar
19. The New Organic Grower - Elliot Coleman
    
20. The Next Whole Earth Catalog
21. Permaculture: A Designers' Manual - Bill Mollison
    
22. Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability - David Holmgren
    
23. Rainwater Catchment Systems for Domestic Supply: Design, Construction and Implementation - Erik Nissen-Petersen
24. Second Nature - Michael Pollan
25. Water-Wise Vegetables: For the Maritime Northwest Gardener - Steve Solomon
26. Wise words for the good life : [a homesteader's personal collection] - Helen Nearing
27. You Grow Girl - Gayla Trail

POLLUTION by HUMANS

1. Dancing at the Dead Sea: Tracking the World's Environmental Hotspots - Alanna Mitchell
2. Effects of Air Pollution & Acid Rain on Fish Wildlife Their Habitats Lakes - US Dept Interior
3. Fresh Air for Life: How to Win Your Unseen War Against Indoor Air Pollution - Allan C. Somersall
4. The Future of Ice - Gretel Ehrlich ! (Greenland to Argentina)
5. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash - Elizabeth Royte
6. Gasp!: The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air - Joe Sherman
7. The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of a City - Robert Sullivan
8. The Particulate Air Pollution Controversy, a Case Study and Lessons Learned - Robert F. Phalen
9. Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird - Andrew D. Blechman
   
10. Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants - Robert Sullivan
11. The Silent Killers: Indoor Air Pollution - Pete Billac
12. Smoke and Mirrors: The Politics and Culture of Air Pollution - E. Melanie Depuis
13. Toxic Air Pollution Handbook - David R. Patrick
14. Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam + Jetsam - Skye Moody
15. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash - Susan Strasser

RATIONALITY

1. Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
2. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon - Daniel C. Dennett
3. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason - Sam Harris
4. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - Charles Mackay
5. Freethinkers: A history of American Secularism - Susan Jacoby
6. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
   
7. God, the Devil and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory - Niall Shanks
8. Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings - Marcus Borg, Jack Cornfield, Ray Riegert
   
9. Jesus Rode a Donkey - Linda Seger
10. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism - Michelle Goldberg
    
11. Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
12. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why - Bart D. Ehrman
13. Why Christianity Must Change or Die - Bishop John Selby Spong
    

SOCIAL + SCIENCE

1. Are Men Necessary? - Maureen Dowd
   
2. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
3. Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism - Daniel Harris
   
4. Freakanomics
5. Keep Your Brain Alive
6. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America - Barbara Ehrenreich
7. The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less - Barry Schwartz
8. Saturday Night - Susan Orlean
   
9. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife - Mary Roach
10. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
11. Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

To Neil's home town paper: The Muscatine Journal

(written and published in December 2006 - this provoked a lot of online and family debate)


We tried leaning on Iraq pretty hard.
We went over there with enthusiastic young people and vague
marching orders, but with no knowledge of the culture and no
grasp of the language.

The phrase "know your enemy" should apply in 2 ways.
One: to know the customs and motives.
Two: to actually know who it is you are fighting.

Sadly, we seemed ignorant in both areas.

This is of course assuming that it was even noble to enter Iraq
in the first place. A small smattering of paid-off buffoons in the
Bush gang got us deep into this mess. Now, as Keith Olbermann
of MSNBC asserts, they should finally "pull over to ask for directions".
Annoyingly it seems consulting the Iraq Study Group was just a
surface fake. This gang of completely inept chickenhawks will
likely continue its assault on sound reason.

Is it that after 5 years of tragic bumbles in every area they suddenly
took genius pills or received an ethical morality injection and will
decide to listen to the Iraq Study Group ? These Study Group fellas
barely fall outside Bush's small insular circle anyway.
Not likely we'll see any profound change.
I expect more hiding, lies, and evasive no-content answers from
all the Oil Warriors in that short list of first string failures we elected.

Unlike the Iraqis under Saddam WE actually have the tools to remove
this despotic Corporo-Government of ours. The NeoCon and Halliburton
cartel built a decent little 8 year empire with nepotism and Daddy's
name. But all it may take is a little more blowback to get the ball
rolling back in the right direction.

It seems it already is.


by Neil Whitacre