Meanwhile Next Door To The Good Life

Updated a decade after its original publication, this memoir by Jean Hay Bright chronicles the years in the 1970s when the author and her first husband, a traumatized Vietnam veteran, homesteaded on 25 rugged Maine acres sold to them by Living the Good Life authors Helen and Scott Nearing, and the aftermath of that experience in the decades that followed. Jean also used her investigative reporting skills to try to resolve some long-standing and nagging questions about the Nearings, focusing particularly on their finances over the decades. Her research also turned up some surprising and enlightening facts about how Helen and Scott Nearing actually lived and died. The revised edition has a new Prologue by Susan Hand Shetterly, more family photos, an expanded Afterword, as well as details and a new chapter pulled from Scott Nearing's FBI file, including documentation of Scott's listing in J. Edgar Hoover's Custodial Detention program.

For many, “going back to the land” brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s—hippie communes and the Summer of Love, The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. But these latest back-to-the-landers are part of a much larger story. Americans have been dreaming of returning to the land ever since they started to leave it. In Back to the Land, Dona Brown explores the history of this recurring impulse. ? Back-to-the-landers have often been viewed as nostalgic escapists or romantic nature-lovers. But their own words reveal a more complex story. In such projects as Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farms, Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Broadacre City,” and Helen and Scott Nearing’s quest for “the good life,” Brown finds that the return to the farm has meant less a going-backwards than a going-forwards, a way to meet the challenges of the modern era. Progressive reformers pushed for homesteading to help impoverished workers get out of unhealthy urban slums. Depression-era back-to-the-landers, wary of the centralizing power of the New Deal, embraced a new “third way” politics of decentralism and regionalism. Later still, the movement merged with environmentalism. To understand Americans’ response to these back-to-the-land ideas, Brown turns to the fan letters of ordinary readers—retired teachers and overworked clerks, recent immigrants and single women. In seeking their rural roots, Brown argues, Americans have striven above all for the independence and self-sufficiency they associate with the agrarian ideal. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians

A lively biography of the famous homesteader and author Helen Knothe Nearing

"Gould's attention to the ironies and ambivalences that abound in the practice of homesteading provides fresh and insightful perspective."—Beth Blissman, Oberlin College "This luminously written ethnography of the worlds that homesteaders make significantly broadens our understanding of modern American religion. In richly textured descriptions of the everyday lives and work of the homesteaders with whom she lived, Gould helps us understand how the tasks of clearing land, making bread, and building a garden wall were ways of taking on the most urgent issues of meaning and ethics."—Robert A. Orsi, Harvard University "This is a fascinating, authoritative, and accessible look at one of America's most important subcultures. If you ever get around to building that cabin in the woods, or especially if you don't, you'll want this volume on the bookshelf."—Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape "Rebecca Gould's compelling book on American homesteading brings the study of the religion-nature connection in the U.S. to a new place."—Catherine L. Albanese, author of Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age "Gould provides brand new data and sheds new interpretive light on familiar figures and movements. At Home in Nature is a model of how to seamlessly blend ethnography and history."—Bron Taylor, University of Florida, editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature

Not since Thoreau made his home in the woods at Walden Pond has the notion of self-sufficiency held more universal appeal. There's no question we're going through some tough economic times, but this book offers an alternative. It's a guide for anyone who imagines a better life--from struggling families tired of energy dependency to dreamers who always wished they could live off the land someday. This ultimate DIY guide holds to the premise that anyone can homestead, and raise at least a portion of their food themselves--even if they live in the city. Homesteading in the 21st Century is absolutely brimming with ideas on how to take control of your life by degrees--whether that means keeping chickens, growing a garden, or brewing your own beer.

The village green is the focal point of any community, a gathering place where the best ideas take root and the brightest voices are heard. The New Village Green gathers some of the best ideas and brightest voices of the green community, some famous and familiar, others fresh and unknown. Each tells an absorbing story, and collectively they comprise a powerful chorus that profiles the current state of the environment. This remarkable book gathers wisdom and insight from a compelling and thought-provoking virtual community. Each contributor brings a unique perspective that mingles reverence for the environment with provocative thoughts for the future. Topics range from spirituality to solar panels and, just like a real village green, are juxtaposed with opinions from “the new village people,” including: Writers Bill McKibben and Michael Pollan Scientists James Lovelock and Donella Meadows Spiritual leaders Gandhi and Buddha And practical, homespun topics are given equal time: Good reasons to embrace alternative currencies Tips for growing great garlic Meant to be devoured in one sitting or sipped a little at a time, this book springboards the green movement into the future by acknowledging its roots in the past. Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and Helen and Scott Nearing are as relevant today as the Slow Food Movement and Peak Oil. This book will touch the heart of anyone who lives with conscience and hope. Stephen Morris is editor and publisher of Green Living Magazine and co-founder of The Public Press.

In Nearly Forgotten: Seventh-day Adventists in Jamaica, Vermont, and Their Place in Vermont History, Floyd Greenleaf traces the birth of not only the local Seventh-day Adventist congregation in the rural township of Jamaica but also the rise of the Seventh-day Adventist movement itself, with its roots in Millerism and the development of second-advent and Sabbath theology. Greenleaf explores the complex and dynamic relationship between the trajectory of the church and a multitude of social, economic, political, and religious forces at play during the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. The book gives us an intriguing glimpse at the church's heyday and a mysterious decline that now leaves us with only memorabilia, brief personal accounts, diaries, some church records appearing in denominational publications, and overgrown tombstones. And yet, based on all the clues Greenleaf examines, the vibrant lives appearing in his narrative are important to the story of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They not only reflected Adventism of the time, but Vermont history as well, and left a mark on the local scene. What life forces remain active, and what elements of identity have persisted to bring us to where we are today?

New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.