Estill is a legitimate source on the subject: he co-founded Piedmont Biofuels, a biodiesel co-op that went from backyard operation into an industrial plant in a few short years. The characters in Estill's world are both entertaining and endearing. Many of them show a flinty defiance, positioning themselves as courageous Daniels against the Goliaths of corporate greed and globalization. Readers interested in academic arguments for local economies can find other books on the subject, but if they want a compelling story about noble atempts to walk the talk, Small is Possible delivers. - Brian Baughan, Sustainablog"In an age of increasing globalization, it is hopeful to be reminded that there are still communities where transactions are handled in handshakes rather than receipts. Estill takes us on a loving stroll through his North Carolina neighborhood and shows us how small-scale sustainability - feeding, fueling, and financing locally - is both possible and preferable." - Book Notes, Orion MagazineOne of my favorite ideas in this book is the idea of open source. Once you let go of this idea that everything must be copyrighted, everything must be owned and protected in order to make money, you become free. Open source ideas quickly foster a more open community, a more open and honest society. A gropu of people or organizaitons all start working toward a common goal rather than all working against one another. Beautiful, isn't it?Another beautiful idea is that a community needs a variety of people and businesses to thrive. And that as you begin living locally- and begin working toward a healthy community - people and businesses find their niches. And when you find your own niche within the local economy, your own happiness rises. Your sense of well-being increases when you realize your positive and necessary contribution to society.As we go further into debt and economic security throughout the world, nurturing our small, local, sustainable businesses and infrastructure will become increasingly important. I recommend this book.Reviewed by Melinda on The Blogging BookwormIn an era when incomprehensibly complex issues like Peak Oil and climate change dominate headlines, practical solutions at a local level can seem somehow inadequate.In response, Lyle Estill’s Small is Possible introduces us to “hometown security,” with this chronicle of a community-powered response to resource depletion in a fickle global economy. True stories, springing from the soils of Chatham County, North Carolina, offer a positive counterbalance to the bleakness of our age.This is the story of how one small southern US town found actual solutions to actual problems. Unwilling to rely on the government and wary of large corporations, these residents discovered it is possible for a community to feed itself, fuel itself, heal itself, and govern itself.This book is filled with newspaper columns, blog entries, letters, and essays that have appeared on the margins of small-town economies. Tough subjects are handled with humor and finesse. Compelling stories of successful small businesses, from the grocery co-op to the biodiesel co-op, describe a town and its people on a genuine quest for sustainability.Everyone interested in sustainability, local economy, small business, and whole foods will be inspired by the success stories in this book.Lyle Estill is “Vice President of Stuff ” at Piedmont Biofuels, and has won numerous awards for his work in the biodiesel business. He is the author of Biodiesel Power and lives in Moncure, North Carolina.

    This work is both entertaining and thought-provoking. Great food for thought and (dare we say) conversation starters for your own debates with friends. Scroll up and click Buy Now and you can start reading immediately. If you don't have a Kindle, no problem! You can read this e-book on any device using Amazon's free Kindle app.

    He wastes no time trying to find out who framed him for a grizzly double murder. He finds that the clues lead to people close to home. Will he still choose to kill the men responsible for him losing his freedom even if that will hurt the people that he loves? Spook Crawford and Jet Johnson have been friends since the sandbox. Jet knows the real meaning "Blood Makes Us Related, Loyalty Makes Us Family". Jet has been in love with Tanae since adolescents. His first priority is to keep her safe and ensure that she lives out her dreams. When his relatives actions threaten Tanae well-being will Jet choose his relatives or his family. Tashena and Tanae Crawford were born into the world as twins however nothing about their personality would even suggest they are even related. Tashena Crawford is a young girl looking for love in all the wrong places after the death of her parents. She thinks she's found someone that loves her as much as she does him. Only to find out that he may have used her as a spawn to inflict more damage on her already fragile family causing them to be apart even more. Will she choose to give her loyalty to the man that has her heart or her brothers and family? Tanae Crawford is on her way to college until she sees everything the family is going through. Fighting with herself to decide if she should go to college or stay until the family gets back to normal. Will she decide to put her wants and needs first or will she let what's happening with her family dictate her next move? In life, there are decisions that are easy to make and some harder than anyone could imagine. The Crawford clan was always taught to face things head on. They don't know how to deal with things that have their mind and hearts going in two opposite directions. This is a story of love, betrayal, secrets, and snakes so get ready for the ride.

    The perfect life, the dream career, great friends and family who love her dearly, the sexy husband, and her beautiful baby girl Jaxon. But things are far from what they seem. Life for the successful, beautiful British is the furthest thing from what it seems. Although she’s married, her husband, Derrick seems to have a hard time remembering that he is. Heartbroken, alone and unhappy, British feels like she is on an emotional rollercoaster and cannot get off. That is until her best friends Kori and Ashley take her on a vacation to Jamaica, where she meets the intriguing Terrence King. Terrance has the streets of Atlanta on lock. Him, his brother Ty and their friends Ronny and Sleez make money as easy as it is to breathe. Unfortunately, jealousy, and larceny rears its ugly head, causing tension within the crew. Terrance’s nickname, Terror, precedes him well, when his gangsta is tested in more ways than one. Neither of the two are in search of each other, but when a simple trip to Jamaica brings British and Terrance together, sparks fly. Thing is, British is still married and Terrance is fresh out of a three year relationship. Will British finally walk away from the disaster she calls a marriage? Or will Derrick convince her to stay? Falling in love is the last thing on Terrance’s agenda. In spite of it all, will British’s mesmerizing ways pull emotions he buried long ago, out of him? Or will he devote one hundred percent of his time on the hustle and the drama rapidly unfolding within his squad, unfazed by British and her sultry ways? Find out how it all unfolds between the drama filled pages of Giving my Heart to An Atlanta Street King.

     With a body that can make a blind man see and a tongue slicker than oil, Kaci can easily bring a grown man to his knees and talk him right out of his pockets like a crooked preacher standing in the congregation. After her father’s untimely death when Kaci was just a little girl, Kaci, her brother Rodrick, and mother, Karen, are left to figure their lives out without the man that has always led the way and provided for them. With Karen’s new boyfriend J-Lo in the house, beating her silly, Kaci feels as though she’s living a nightmare, and the only outlet is sex, drugs, and money. She builds up strong resentment towards her mother and turns to the most dangerous streets of Houston. No longer having a father to teach her how to love herself, Kaci makes up her own rules and develops her own beliefs in how a woman is supposed to conduct herself. With a heart as cold as ice and a mind made of Teflon, Kaci lives life on the edge, that is until she finally meet her match, Kody. Not only is Kody paid, but he’s sexy and smart as hell. He also has a mind that’s just as tough as Kaci, and when their worlds collide, Kaci finds herself being swept off her feet. Kody is nothing like the men that Kaci is used to. He challenges her, makes her feel worthy, but he also plays hard to get, which only makes her want him even more. However, Kody isn’t as perfect as he seems. With Kody having a crazy baby mama straight out of hell, Kaci is now caught up in something that she never in a million years thought she would be caught up in. The rule that Kaci always taught herself was to never love a man, but now that Kody is so deep in her mind, she’s unsure of herself. Kaci has to make a decision; go back to what she knows or stick it out with Kody, knowing he comes with baggage. Find out what happened in another one of Sha Jones’ love story.

     After being in a relationship with Lee for four years, Monique’s fairytale turns into hell and everything takes a bitter turn for her when he starts showing her a whole new side of him that she wasn’t prepared for. Monique would have never thought that things would come to this, and like many women in this situation, she doesn’t know whether to stay or go because even though she is getting abused, she feels as though the love they have for each other will conquer all. Even with being warned by her best friend, Jhazlyn, about Lee’s absurd behavior, Monique believes that he loves her too much to kill her. Stupid, right? Find out if Monique has had enough and escapes the abuse that Lee is putting her through, or if her exact words of him loving her too much to kill her becomes a lie.

    Unable to care for him any longer, and wanting to hide the fact that she was dying from cancer, his mama sent him away, hoping to save her son from a life of trouble. Determined to get back to his mother, Khaution deals with the abuse he faces in foster care, but when his mother dies before he can get back to her, he turns to a life of crime to survive. Not knowing who his father was, Khaution hits the streets as Savage, and it’s not long before he ends up in jail. During a ten-year bid, he is suddenly released early from jail by none other than his father! Things between the two start off strained after not having him around in his life, but eventually, the two create a bond. A bond that enables them to take over the city of New York. But it comes with a price that Khaution wasn’t ready to pay, nor did he know he had to pay! With a queen on his arm that he doesn’t want, Khaution meets the mysterious, Autumn Kennedy. Never being in love before, he wants nothing more than to smash and walk away. However, Autumn pulls him in a way he didn’t see, and he finds himself in love for the first time. But Sybil is not going to let the empire and her king go so easily, and she gives him an ultimatum that he agrees to in order to spare Autumn. But what Sybil failed to remember was they called him Savage for a reason! In the end, she pushes him into making a decision that sends him on a path of truth that he wasn’t expecting. Savage by name and savage by nature. Follow this man as he embarks on a world of love and lies; some more devastating than others!

    Havok and Shannon met on a glimpse. Although the chemistry was deeper than tree roots, Shannon’s attraction is flipped into fear when she becomes an unintended target. When the smoke clears, can she put her trust in the man who gunned her down? These two lives are tainted from the beginning. In the long haul, it may not work out, but maybe the journey will result in the best love that can’t be replaced. Shannon Mitchell didn’t set out to be a single mother. Nevertheless, she has a backbone of steel and a heart of gold. Losing her job, which forced her to relocate back to her hometown of Saint Louis was never in her plans. Shannon made the choice any real mother would. Picking up the late night shift at a strip joint in East Saint Louis, she is quickly pulled in by the fast money. Staying on her grind leads her to many late nights and early mornings. The one morning she sets out to go home to her son, Teon, she ends up being rocked to the ground by a stray bullet. Profusely bleeding, she lays eyes on the shooter. The compromising situation leaves her to lean on Havok to get her medical attention before she bleeds out. When she thinks he is taking her to the hospital, she is sadly mistaken when her heavy eyes roam on a poverty-stricken Clinton Peabody project building. Shontez “Havok” O’Neal went from being broke as hell and sleeping on his Grandma Uma’s couch, to flipping bricks. With a fast come up, the hate is heavy on him. Watching his back and not giving anybody a chance to knock him, Havok is placed between a brick and a hard place when Shannon falls victim to his chaotic lifestyle. Nursing her back to health is the least he can do for this single mother. Even when she pushes him away, he goes the extra mile for this woman. Shannon becomes his weakness, and with time, Shannon’s weakness is him. What should have placed these two far apart, glued them together for a ride they didn’t see coming. The right thing to do becomes the last thing to do when your heart is on the line. Find out what happens when you cross lines with a thug named, Havok.

    May at 10 tells the compelling inside story of the most turbulent period in modern British politics for 100 years.Written by one of Britain’s leading political and social commentators, May at 10 describes how Theresa May arrived in 10 Downing Street in 2016 with the clearest, yet toughest, agenda of any Prime Minister since the Second World War: delivering Brexit. What follows defies belief or historical precedent. This story has never been told.Including a comprehensive series of interviews with May’s closest aides and allies, and with unparalleled access to the advisers who shaped her premiership, Downing Street’s official historian Anthony Seldon decodes the enigma of the Prime Minister’s tenure. Drawing on all his authorial experience, he unpacks what is the most intriguing government and Prime Minister of the modern era.

    He and his group the Earth Guardians believe that today’s youth will play an important role in shaping our future. They know that the choices made right now will have a lasting impact on the world of tomorrow, and people—young and old—are asking themselves what they can do to ensure a positive, just, and sustainable future. We Rise tells these stories and addresses the solutions.Beginning with the empowering story of the Earth Guardians and how Xiuhtezcatl has become a voice for his generation, We Rise explores many aspects of effective activism and provides step-by-step information on how to start and join solution-oriented movements. With conversations between Xiuhtezcatl and well-known activists, revolutionaries, and celebrities, practical advice for living a more sustainable lifestyle, and ideas and tools for building resilient communities, We Rise is an action guide on how to face the biggest problems of today, including climate change, fossil fuel extraction, and industrial agriculture.If you are interested in creating real and tangible change, We Rise will give you the inspiration and information you need to do your part in making the world a better place and leave you asking, what kind of legacy do I want to leave?

     Technology was never neutral; its social, political, and moral impacts have become painfully clear. But the stakes will only get higher as connected cameras will watch over the city, algorithms oversee society’s most critical decisions, and transport, jobs, and even war will become automated. The tech industry hasn’t yet earned the trust these technologies demand. Based on Cennydd’s years of research and consulting, Future Ethics transforms modern ethical theory into practical advice for designers, product managers, and software engineers alike. Cennydd uses the three lenses of modern ethics to focus on some of the tech industry’s biggest challenges: unintended consequences and algorithmic bias, the troubling power of persuasive technology, and the dystopias of surveillance, autonomous war, and a post-work future. Future Ethics is an intelligent, quietly provocative book that challenges technologists to stand up for change, and teaches essential ethical principles and methods for building a fairer future. Cennydd Bowles is a London-based designer and writer with fifteen years of experience and clients including Twitter, Ford, Cisco, and the BBC. His focus today is the ethics of emerging technology. He has lectured on the topic at Carnegie Mellon University, Google, and New York’s School of Visual Arts, and is a sought-after speaker at technology and design events worldwide.

    Yet residents of compact urban centers, David 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 North America--rank first in public-transit use and last in per-capita greenhouse gas production, and they consume gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-1920s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. They are also among the only people in the United States for whom walking is still an important means of daily transportation. These achievements are not accidents. Spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel green, but it doesn't reduce the damage they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage, while also making the problems they cause harder to see and to address. Owen contends that the environmental problem we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's nonrenewable resources, is not how to make teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The problem is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan, whose residents presently come closer than any other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will have to come to terms with.

    Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States' belief in itself as an exceptional nation--democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. Today, though, America has a new symbol: the border wall.In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. history--from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016. For centuries, he shows, America's constant expansion--fighting wars and opening markets--served as a "gate of escape," helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But this deflection meant that the country's problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home.It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism.

    It really is our final warning. Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse.We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond. Degree by terrifying degree, he charts the likely consequences of global heating and the ensuing climate catastrophe.  At one degree – the world we are already living in – vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away, and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth. These escalating consequences can still be avoided, but time is running out. We must largely stop burning fossil fuels within a decade if we are to save the coral reefs and the Arctic. If we fail, then we risk crossing tipping points that could push global climate chaos out of humanity’s control. This book must not be ignored. It really is our final warning.

    Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley's pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees.In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together--as a swirling cloud of bees--to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader's influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution.An impressive exploration of animal behavior, Honeybee Democracy shows that decision-making groups, whether honeybee or human, can be smarter than even the smartest individuals in them.