Archive for “Book Reviews” category
1 - 5 of 19 posts
15 Mar 2010
A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here. As someone who has, for many years, been fascinated by local, natural building materials, this is a fascinating piece of research, one of the first things I have seen which starts trying to calculate the financial benefits to an area of moving towards more locally-sourced building materials.
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18 Nov 2009
I was delighted to hear today that the Italian edition of The Transition Handbook, “Il Manuale Practico della Transizione”, has arrived and is now in print. Regular readers will know that I spent a few years living in Italy earlier in my life, and have a continued affection for the place. Cristiano Bottone, one of the initiators of Transition in Italy, wrote to tell me and asked me “to send us a few lines to present the book to Italian readers”. Allora, ciao tutti…..
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12 Nov 2009
LOCAL FOOD: How To Make It Happen In Your Community. Tamzin Pinkerton & Rob Hopkins. Green Books, 2009. 220 x 220mm, 216pp. £12.95
As the twin issues of Peak Oil and Climate Change become more widely discussed, more people become interested in prom-oting local food as one of the steps towards self-reliance. But how do you go about it, and what do you do if there is no local food to promote? The decades of industrialised agriculture have seen local food links wither and orchards grubbed up. Local Food, the latest book in the Transition series, aims to help local communities rediscover their food culture and in doing so rediscover community itself.
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6 Oct 2009
Book Review: Sanderson, E.W. (2009) Mannahatta: a Natural History of New York. Abrams, New York. 352pp
This is a truly remarkable book. The films of Woody Allen were sometimes referred to as being as much love poems to New York as they were love stories themselves. ‘Mannahatta’ and the project from which the book emerges, is a work which expresses such a deep love of place that I often found it quite deeply moving. It is an utterly extraordinary and beguiling work which, by looking both backwards and forwards, allows us to understand New York in a place that was previously impossible.
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5 Oct 2009
A Review of ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’ by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins. Green Books 2009. By James Howard.
There are some people that aren’t that fussed about food. To them it is merely functional, a fuel that keeps them going that appears in a package or on their plate, and very little time or thought is given to it. I cannot begin to understand that mindset. Food is so much more than merely an energy source – it is often a highly sensuous experience, full of variety and the focal point for wonderful social bonding in many forms. Yes, I love food, always thinking about my next meal and who I will enjoy it with.
Read more»
A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand. You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon. I mention it today because I want to draw your attention to the report launched at the conference, Sustainable Supply Chains that Support Local Economic Development, available to download here. As someone who has, for many years, been fascinated by local, natural building materials, this is a fascinating piece of research, one of the first things I have seen which starts trying to calculate the financial benefits to an area of moving towards more locally-sourced building materials. 
