How to Fix Your Sh*t: A Straightforward Guide to a Better Life


Shaa Wasmund - 2019
    a very, very good book" - Steve Wright (BBC Radio 2) on Do Less, Get More"Inspiring ... sage and sane advice" - Booklist on Do Less, Get MoreHave you ever dreamt of doing something new - setting up a business, getting in shape, or writing a novel - but haven't gotten round to actually doing it? Does 'now' never feel like a good time to start? The time has come.In January 2015, entrepreneur and bestselling author Sháá Wasmund made a decision: to finally get what she wanted. Years after packing in her business (and her salary) to take the plunge, life is everything she hoped it would be. As she discovered, the key to getting what you want is within reach.Building on her many years of professional experience and inspired by her own personal challenges and sh*t-fixing moments, How to Fix Your Sh*t is your pocket life coach. In this simple and systematic guide, Wasmund will empower you to conquer fear, ditch the excuses and start living your best life today.

The Little Book of Going Green: Ways to Make the World a Better Place


Harriet Dyer - 2018
    Filled with facts, theories and tips on how we can do our bit for the planet, this is your one-stop guide to making every aspect of your life earth-friendly.

Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living


Doug Fine - 2008
    So he wonders: Is it possible to keep his Netflix and his car, his Wi-Fi and his subwoofers, and still reduce his carbon footprint? In an attempt to find out, Fine up and moves to a remote ranch in New Mexico, where he brazenly vows to grow his own food, use sunlight to power his world, and drive on restaurant grease. Never mind that he’s never raised so much as a chicken or a bean. Or that he has no mechanical or electrical skills. Whether installing Japanese solar panels, defending the goats he found on Craigslist against coyotes, or co-opting waste oil from the local Chinese restaurant to try and fill the new “veggie oil” tank in his ROAT (short for Ridiculously Oversized American Truck), Fine’s extraordinary undertaking makes one thing clear: It ain’t easy being green. In fact, his journey uncovers a slew of surprising facts about alternative energy, organic and locally grown food, and climate change. Both a hilarious romp and an inspiring call to action, Farewell, My Subaru makes a profound statement about trading today’s instant gratifications for a deeper, more enduring kind of satisfaction.

Hey Doc!: The Battle of Okinawa As Remembered by a Marine Corpsman


Ed Wells - 2017
    This is the wartime memories of a Marine Corpsman who served in Company B, of the 6th Battalion of the 4th Regiment. He saw 100 days of continuous combat during the Battle of Okinawa, including the Battle for Sugar Loaf, and was part of the landing force that was headed to Japan when the atomic bomb dropped. These were recorded after 60 years of reflection, and are presented to honor all veterans.

Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea


Paige West - 2006
    Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over a period of seven years, Paige West focuses on the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, the site of a biodiversity conservation project implemented between 1994 and 1999. She describes the interactions between those who ran the program—mostly ngo workers—and the Gimi people who live in the forests surrounding Crater Mountain. West shows that throughout the project there was a profound disconnect between the goals of the two groups. The ngo workers thought that they would encourage conservation and cultivate development by teaching Gimi to value biodiversity as an economic resource. The villagers expected that in exchange for the land, labor, food, and friendship they offered the conservation workers, they would receive benefits, such as medicine and technology. In the end, the divergent nature of each group’s expectations led to disappointment for both.West reveals how every aspect of the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area—including ideas of space, place, environment, and society—was socially produced, created by changing configurations of ideas, actions, and material relations not only in Papua New Guinea but also in other locations around the world. Complicating many of the assumptions about nature, culture, and development underlying contemporary conservation efforts, Conservation Is Our Government Now demonstrates the unique capacity of ethnography to illuminate the relationship between the global and the local, between transnational processes and individual lives.

The Course in Manifesting 3 Book Box Set: (Becoming Magic, Doing Magic & Advanced Magic)


Genevieve Davis - 2015
    In this course, I outline the exact steps that enabled me to move my own life from one of poverty and drudgery, to one of previously unimaginable wealth, purpose, abundance and joy. ‘But Magic? I do hope you are joking!’ That’s what I would have said, five or ten years ago. I once despised all things ‘New-Age’, all these spiritual types and their airy-fairy views, their bad science and their irrational beliefs. I read all the New Thought and Law of Attraction greats, Wallace Wattles, Anthony Robbins, Rhonda Byrne, Napoleon Hill, Esther Hicks and Wayne Dyer. But no matter how many books I read, or how closely I followed their instructions for manifesting money or love, I couldn’t make it work. It was only when I recognized, accepted and finally embraced that what I was doing was actually some kind of Magic that suddenly things began to fall into place. Once I realized that the power came from within me, it was as if the light had suddenly been switched on and my manifestations began to work. I learned how to manifest money and love, but I also learned how to be happy, truly happy. If you’re jaded by New Age spirituality and the whole Law of Attraction idea, or have become bored by its failure to deliver… these books are for you. It is my intention to lead you by the hand through a marvellous journey of wonder and adventure. BECOMING MAGIC (Book 1) Part one of this course, Becoming Magic, lays the groundwork for becoming a magical person, reawakening the power that lies within you. From here, the plan is to build your knowledge slowly, gradually, building on what has gone before, moving on to more complex techniques only once the basics are mastered. DOING MAGIC (Book 2) Book two, Doing Magic, offers concrete techniques and instructions for bringing wonderful things into your life. So many people fail with Magic and the Law of Attraction because they rush headlong into using techniques, trying to create enormous manifestations, making very simple but crucial mistakes. When they are disappointed, they imagine they have been duped. The sceptics are right. This is all a load of scammy nonsense. And they give up, declaring it just doesn’t work. I am telling you that it does work. And you can make it work. And this book will show you how. ADVANCED MAGIC (Book 3) And finally, we complete the journey with Advanced Magic. It’s time to think a little deeper, feel a little keener, experience a little more intensely, and so consolidate and strengthen your knowledge. This book is designed to increase the fledgling power that you discovered from the first two books of the course. We now need to build on what has gone before, boosting your success, increasing your Magical power and making your manifestations more reliable… and more spectacular. Be warned: if you want a quick fix of positive thinking, to be told that using Magic and the Law of Attraction is fast and simple, and anyone can master it with ease, I suggest you buy a different book.

Growing Up Between Stops on the A-train


Jennifer Y. Johnson-Garcia
    By seventeen, Jennifer leaves home and supports herself through her senior year of high school, graduating on-time with her class. But she has much more to prove. Determined, Jennifer kisses Colorado goodbye and sets off on a one-way trip to New York City.In the city, Jennifer hits the ground hustling, securing a job selling beepers on the street and singing for strangers every chance she gets. Not long after, she is discovered by a music producer on the A-train, records a demo, and signs her first record deal. However, Jennifer's budding career is interrupted by an unplanned pregnancy, destroying her odds in a male-dominated and cutthroat music industry. Unyielding, Jennifer persists for several years before landing a chance audition with platinum-selling producers, Full Force, who sign her.In the blink of an eye, Jennifer skyrockets from starving artist to New York City's best kept secret, songwriting for superstars and all but sealing her fate as a future household name. However, just as she is on the brink of fame to go with the small fortune she earns from publishing deals, an unexpected turn of events sets her on the rockiest road to dreams come true.Growing Up Between Stops on the A-train is the inspirational true story about how one woman discovered the secret to success and life happiness, the hard way.GUBSOTAT will be published in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audio formats on November 7, 2019. Follow Jennifer Y. Johnson-Garcia on Facebook or @jyjohnsongarcia and @GUBSOTAT on Instagram to become an advanced reader or get a copy of the book sooner!

Encounters with the Archdruid


John McPhee - 1971
    The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

When A Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind Or Destroy It


Jonathan Watts - 2010
    Watts is a correspondent for The Guardian in Beijing. In Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Coal: A Human History


Barbara Freese - 2003
    Prized as “the best stone in Britain” by Roman invaders who carved jewelry out of it, coal has transformed societies, expanded frontiers, and sparked social movements, and still powers our electric grid. Yet coal’s world-changing power has come at a tremendous price, including centuries of blackening our skies and lungs—and now the dangerous warming of our global climate. Ranging from the “great stinking fogs” of London to the rat-infested coal mines of Pennsylvania, from the impoverished slums of Manchester to the toxic streets of Beijing, Coal is a captivating narrative about an ordinary substance with an extraordinary impact on human civilization.

The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health


David R. Montgomery - 2015
    The Hidden Half of Nature reveals why good health—for people and for plants—depends on Earth’s smallest creatures. Restoring life to their barren yard and recovering from a health crisis, David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé discover astounding parallels between the botanical world and our own bodies. From garden to gut, they show why cultivating beneficial microbiomes holds the key to transforming agriculture and medicine.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline


Andreas Malm - 2021
    Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a booming fossil fuel industry, rising seas, rising emission levels, and a rising temperature. With the stakes so high, why haven’t we moved beyond peaceful protest?In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.Offering a counter-history of how mass popular change has occurred, from the democratic revolutions overthrowing dictators to the movement against apartheid and for women’s suffrage, Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change. In a braided narrative that moves from the forests of Germany and the streets of London to the deserts of Iraq, Malm offers us an incisive discussion of the politics and ethics of pacifism and violence, democracy and social change, strategy and tactics, and a movement compelled by both the heart and the mind. Here is how we fight in a world on fire.

Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators


William Stolzenburg - 2008
    Not so anymore. All but exterminated, these predators of the not-too-distant past have been reduced to minor players of the modern era. And what of it? Wildlife journalist William Stolzenburg follows in the wake of nature's topmost carnivores, and finds chaos in their absence.From the brazen mobs of deer and marauding raccoons of backyard America to streamsides of Yellowstone National Park crushed by massive herds of elk; from urchin-scoured reefs in the North Pacific to ant-devoured islands in Venezuela, Stolzenburg leads a startling tour through bizarre, impoverished landscapes of pest and plague. For anyone who has seldom given thought to the meat-eating beasts so recently missing from the web of life, here is a world of reason to think again.

Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World


Seth M. Siegel - 2015
    government predicts that forty of our fifty states—and 60 percent of the earth's land surface—will soon face alarming gaps between available water and the growing demand for it. Without action, food prices will rise, economic growth will slow, and political instability is likely to follow.Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also had an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors—the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan—every day.Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews, Let There Be Water reveals the methods and techniques of the often offbeat inventors who enabled Israel to lead the world in cutting-edge water technology.Let There Be Water also tells unknown stories of how cooperation on water systems can forge diplomatic ties and promote unity. Remarkably, not long ago, now-hostile Iran relied on Israel to manage its water systems, and access to Israel's water know-how helped to warm China's frosty relations with Israel.Beautifully written, Let There Be Water is an inspiring account of the vision and sacrifice by a nation and people that have long made water security a top priority. Despite scant natural water resources, a rapidly growing population and economy, and often hostile neighbors, Israel has consistently jumped ahead of the water innovation-curve to assure a dynamic, vital future for itself. Every town, every country, and every reader can benefit from learning what Israel did to overcome daunting challenges and transform itself from a parched land into a water superpower.

The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California


Mark Arax - 2019
    In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it--from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells and built higher dams, pushing the water supply past its limit.The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history, and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers--the nut king, grape king and citrus queen--tell their story here for the first time.It is a tale of politics and hubris in the arid West, of imported workers left behind in the sun and the fatigued earth that is made to give more even while it keeps sinking. But when drought turns to flood once again, all is forgotten as the farmers plant more nuts and the developers build more houses.Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.