Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet


Daniella Martin - 2014
    They’re what’s for dinner. Can you imagine a world in which that simple statement is not only true but in fact an unremarkable part of daily life? Daniella Martin, entomophagist and blogger, can.In this rollicking excursion into the world of edible insects, Martin takes us to the front lines of the next big trend in the global food movement and shows us how insects just might be the key to solving world hunger. Along the way, we sample moth larvae tacos at the Don Bugito food cart in San Francisco, travel to Copenhagen to meet the experimental tasters at Noma’s Nordic Food Lab, gawk at the insects stocked in the frozen food aisle at Thailand’s Costco, and even crash an underground bug-eating club in Tokyo.Martin argues that bugs have long been an important part of indigenous diets and cuisines around the world, and investigates our own culture’s bias against their use as a food source. She shines a light on the cutting-edge research of Marcel Dicke and other scientists who are only now beginning to determine the nutritional makeup of insects and champion them as an efficient and sustainable food source.Whether you love or hate bugs, Edible will radically change the way you think about the global food crisis and perhaps persuade you that insects are much more than a common pest. For the adventurous, the book includes an illustrated list of edible insects, recipes, and instructions on how to raise bugs at home.

Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of a Common Fate


Mark Kurlansky - 2020
    This world tour reveals an eras-long history of man’s misdirected attempts to manipulate salmon and its environments for his own benefit and gain, whether for entertainment or to harvest food.In addition, Kurlansky’s research shows that all over the world these fish, uniquely connected to both marine and terrestrial ecology as well as fresh and salt water, are a natural barometer for the health of the planet. He documents that for centuries man’s greatest assaults on nature, from overfishing to dams, from hatcheries to fish farms, from industrial pollution to the ravages of climate change, are evidenced in the sensitive life cycle of salmon.With stunning historical and contemporary photographs and illustrations throughout, Kurlansky’s insightful conclusion is that the only way to save salmon is to save the planet and, at the same time, the only way to save the planet is to save the mighty, heroic salmon.

No One's the Bitch: A Ten-Step Plan for the Mother and Stepmother Relationship


Jennifer Newcomb Marine - 2009
    Whether you just want to create a neutral, “business” partnership with the “other woman” in your life—or actually, gulp, become friends—they show you how to reach your goal through ten powerful steps.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed


James C. Scott - 1998
    Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

Hygge: Discovering The Danish Art Of Happiness – How To Live Cozily And Enjoy Life’s Simple Pleasures


Olivia Telford - 2017
     For many of us in today’s crazy and hectic world of careers, family and social lives, we can often forget that the things which are simpler and give the greatest pleasure are often put to one side. The simple pleasure of sitting in silence, watching the sunset, or watching the crackle of a fire as you share a meal can often have a greater effect on our souls than any material thing. And this where Hygge makes its mark. Hygge is more than just a concept. It is a way of being and living that has been adopted by countless numbers of people throughout Scandinavia and the wider world and reflects a ‘cosiness’ that encompasses the positivity and enjoyment that one can get from simple everyday things. It does not need to cost a lot of money and can be as humble as having a warm fire and enough food to eat. Now, you can make Hygge a part of your life with Hygge: Discovering the Danish Art of Happiness ─ How to Live Cosily and Enjoy Life’s Simple Pleasures. Inside the pages of this book, you will find 12 chapters which give in-depth information on what Hygge is and how best to use it in your particular set of circumstances, including: Where Hygge comes from The fundamental principles of Hygge The benefits you can get from living a Hygge lifestyle How to apply Hygge to your life How Hygge changes with each season How to live a Hygge lifestyle, even when you have a budget to consider Millions of people around the world are turning to Hygge as a great way to live their lives. You can now be a part of this amazing revolution, build a simpler life, be happier, more content and in control of your life. Click the link below to view the book on Amazon! https://amzn.to/2KXgEM4

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth


R. Buckminster Fuller - 1969
    Fuller expresses what may well be his penultimate view of the human condition. Here, in a mood at once philosophical and involved, Mr. Fuller traces man's intellectual evolution and weighs his capability for survival on this magnificent craft, this Spaceship Earth, this superbly designed sphere of almost negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.Mr. Fuller is optimistic that man will survive and, through research and development and increased industrialization, generate wealth so rapidly that he can do very great things. But, he notes, there must be an enormous educational task successfully accomplished right now to convert man's tendency toward oblivion into a realization of his potential, to a universe-exploring advantage from this Spaceship Earth.It has been noted that Mr. Fuller spins ideas in clusters, and clusters of his ideas generate still other clusters. The concept spaceship earth is Mr. Fuller's, and though used by Barbara Ward as the title of a work of her own the idea was acknowledged by her there as deriving from Mr. Fuller. The brilliant syntheses of some fundamental Fuller principles given here makes of this book a microcosm of the Fuller system.

Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture – A New Earth


Charles Massy - 2017
    Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores transformative and regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. It is a story of how a grassroots revolution – a true underground insurgency – can save the planet, help turn climate change around, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food.   Using his personal experience as a touchstone – from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health – Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. He shows – through evocative stories – how innovative farmers are finding a new way and interweaves his own local landscape, its seasons and biological richness.  At stake is not only a revolution in human health and our communities but the very survival of the planet. For farmer, backyard gardener, food buyer, health worker, policy maker and public leader alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our earth. It comprises a powerful and moving paean of hope.

The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale


John A. List - 2022
    But scale isn't just about accumulating more users or capturing more market share. It's about whether an idea that takes hold in a small group can do the same in a much larger one—whether you’re growing a small business, rolling out a diversity and inclusion program, or delivering billions of doses of a vaccine. Translating an idea into widespread impact, says University of Chicago economist John A. List, depends on one thing only: whether it can achieve “high voltage”—the ability to be replicated at scale. In The Voltage Effect, List explains that scalable ideas share a common set of attributes, while any number of attributes can doom an unscalable idea. Drawing on his original research, as well as fascinating examples from the realms of business, policymaking, education, and public health, he identifies five measurable vital signs that a scalable idea must possess, and offers proven strategies for avoiding voltage drops and engineering voltage gains. You’ll learn: • How celebrity chef Jamie Oliver expanded his restaurant empire by focusing on scalable “ingredients” (until it collapsed because talent doesn’t scale) • Why the failure to detect false positives early on caused the Reagan-era drug-prevention program to backfire at scale • How governments could deliver more services to more citizens if they focused on the last dollar spent • How one education center leveraged positive spillovers to narrow the achievement gap across the entire community • Why the right set of incentives, applied at scale, can boost voter turnout, increase clean energy use, encourage patients to consistently take their prescribed medication, and more. By understanding the science of scaling, we can drive change in our schools, workplaces, communities, and society at large. Because a better world can only be built at scale.

The Craftsman


Richard Sennett - 2008
    The computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsman’s work. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world. The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill—from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things.

The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update


Donella H. Meadows - 1972
    Their results shocked the world and created stirring conversation about global 'overshoot,' or resource use beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Now, preeminent environmental scientists Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have teamed up again to update and expand their original findings in The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Global Update.Meadows, Randers, and Meadows are international environmental leaders recognized for their groundbreaking research into early signs of wear on the planet. Citing climate change as the most tangible example of our current overshoot, the scientists now provide us with an updated scenario and a plan to reduce our needs to meet the carrying capacity of the planet.Over the past three decades, population growth and global warming have forged on with a striking semblance to the scenarios laid out by the World3 computer model in the original Limits to Growth. While Meadows, Randers, and Meadows do not make a practice of predicting future environmental degradation, they offer an analysis of present and future trends in resource use, and assess a variety of possible outcomes.In many ways, the message contained in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a warning. Overshoot cannot be sustained without collapse. But, as the authors are careful to point out, there is reason to believe that humanity can still reverse some of its damage to Earth if it takes appropriate measures to reduce inefficiency and waste.Written in refreshingly accessible prose, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a long anticipated revival of some of the original voices in the growing chorus of sustainability. Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update is a work of stunning intelligence that will expose for humanity the hazy but critical line between human growth and human development.

A Sense of Self: Memory, the Brain, and Who We Are


Veronica O'Keane - 2021
    Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. This process shapes us: filtering the world around us, informing our behavior and feeding our imagination.Psychiatrist Veronica O’Keane has spent many years observing how memory and experience are interwoven. In this rich, fascinating exploration, she asks, among other things: Why can memories feel so real? How are our sensations and perceptions connected with them? Why is place so important in memory? Are there such things as “true” and “false” memories? And, above all, what happens when the process of memory is disrupted by mental illness? O’Keane uses the broken memories of psychosis to illuminate the integrated human brain, offering a new way of thinking about our own personal experiences.Drawing on poignant accounts that include her own experiences, as well as what we can learn from insights in literature and fairytales and the latest neuroscientific research, O’Keane reframes our understanding of the extraordinary puzzle that is the human brain and how it changes during its growth from birth to adolescence and old age. By elucidating this process, she exposes the way that the formation of memory in the brain is vital to the creation of our sense of self.

Planet of Slums


Mike Davis - 2006
    Mike Davis charts the expected global urbanization explosion over the next 30 years and points out that outside China most of the rest of the world's urban growth will be without industrialization or development, rather a 'peverse' urban boom in spite of stagnant or negative urban economic growth.

The Last Volcano: A Man, a Romance, and the Quest to Understand Nature's Most Magnificant Fury


John Dvorak - 2015
    They have destroyed cities and ended civilizations. John Dvorak, the acclaimed author of Earthquake Storms, looks into the early years of volcanology and its "father," Thomas Jaggar. Jaggar was the youngest of five scientists to investigate the explosion of Mount Pelee in Martinique, which leveled the entire city of St. Pierre and killed its entire population in two minutes. This explosion changed science forever, and Jaggar became obsessed with understanding the force of nature that could do this.A colorful cast of scientists wind their way through The Last Volcano, including an escaped slave who became the leading volcanic guide in Hawaii. But the focus is on Jaggar, who was so fixated on volcanology that he moved to a small house overlooking the lava lake of Kilauea, much to the derision of the scientific community.Falling in love a widowed schoolteacher who shared his passion, Jaggar devoted his life to studying volcanic activity and the mysteries beneath the earth's surface. From their precarious perch, this dynamic husband and wife duo would discover a way to predict volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, promote geothermal energy, and theorize new ways to study the ocean bottom.

The Last Wave


Pankaj Sekhsaria - 2014
    As he observes the slow but sure destruction of everything the Jarawa require for their survival, Harish is moved by a need to understand, to do something. His unlikely friend and partner on this quest is uncle Pame, a seventy-year-old Karen boatman whose father was brought to the islands from Burma by the British in the 1920s. The islands also bring him to Seema, a 'local born'-a descendant of the convicts who were lodged in the infamous cellular jail of port Blair. Seema has seen the world, but unlike most educated islanders of her generation, she has decided to return home. Harishs earnestness, his fascination and growing love for the islands, their shared attempt to understand the Jarawa and the loss of her own first love, all draw Seema closer to Harish. As many things seem to fall in place and parallel journeys converge, an unknown contender appears-the giant tsunami of December 2004. The last wave is a story of lost loves, but also of a culture, a community, an ecology poised on the sharp edge of time and history.

The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind


Seth S. Horowitz - 2012
    How do we know which sounds should startle us, which should engage us, and which should turn us off?Why do we often fall asleep on train rides or in the car? Is there really a musical note that can make you sick to your stomach? Why do city folks have trouble sleeping in the country, and vice versa?In this fascinating exploration, research psychologist and sound engineer Seth Horowitz shows how our sense of hearing manipulates the way we think, consume, sleep, and feel.Starting with the basics of the biology, Horowitz explains why we hear what we hear, and in turn, how we've learned to manipulate sound: into music, commercial jingles, car horns, and modern inventions like cochlear implants, ultrasound scans, and the mosquito ringtone. Combining the best parts of This is Your Brain on Music and The Emotional Brain, this book gives new insight into what really makes us tick.