Required Reading

Here is a list of books that have influenced, educated and entertained us. We consider these required reading for anyone who wants to make a change. We encourage you to borrow them from your library or support a local book store.
Sandra Steingraber explores the connection of the ever increasing cancer rates and it's connection to the chemicals that we eat, breath and live in daily. This is a ground breaking book that implores us to scrutinize what we are putting into the enviroment and how it is effecting each one of us. The products we buy and the food that we eat are to blame and only the educated shopper can change this. KK

Ferenc Mate asks the question of how much is enough. Do we really need a McMansion and five cars to be happy? Mate calls into question the daily distractions that fill our world and asks if there is a better way. KK

A masterpiece. Ferenc Mate writes brilliantly with Runyonesque humor and poetic prose. He satirizes our modern society driven by greed and mindlessness, and in its place he recommends the ultimate sanity. I loved it. Highly recommended. -- Dr. Helen Caldicott, author of If You Love This Planet

"What should we have for dinner?" To answer this question, author Michael Pollan follows four meals, each derived through a different food-production system, from their origins to the plate. Along the way, he examines the ethical, political, and ecological factors that are intertwined in the industrial, large-scale organic, local, and personal (hunted-gathered) food chains, while describing the environmental and health consequences that result from food choices within these chains. It isn’t a preachy book, just a good piece of writing looking at the costs and benefits of the four food systems above. This book grabbed me and never let go. It went a long way toward my vinous religious conversion to natural wines. Not to mention food, like wine, tastes better when it is natural, fresh, and not over processed, right? DP
Mark Kurlansky does a great job of walking you through the history of civilization simply by telling the story of salt. From the first discoveries and use of natural gas and black powder to Ghandi's walk of rebellion, salt was a main character. There are a hand full of items that have marched through time faithfully with mankind, this is the story of one such item. KK
Try as we might, we can not separate ourselves from nature, nor control it. Just as every natural process seeks balance, we must follow and learn how to become part of this balance. David Suzuki does an incredible job exploring where we are and where we need to be. Philosophy, theology and science are his tools to express the changes that must be embraced by mankind. KK

As we start to move farming towards a chemical free sustainable future, we must constantaly evaluate where we are and where we are going. Just because it is an improvement does not mean we should blindly support it. Julie Guthman asks the hard questions and the answers are surprising. KK

"Agrarian Dreams throws a cold shower of reality over the dream of organic agriculture in California, demonstrating all that is lost when organic farming goes industrial. This is a challenging book, and until we can answer the hard questions Julie Guthman poses, a genuinely sustainable agriculture will elude us."—Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World