Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Archive for “Book Reviews” category
Showing results 21 - 25 of 41 for the category: Book Reviews.
8 Apr 2010
From time to time I hear about people doing Book Clubs based around the Transition Handbook. Thankfully, and entirely in a self-organising “wouldn’t-it-be-great-if-there-was-a-study-guide” kind of way, Joann Kerr, Susan Gregory, and Leo Brodie of Sustainable NE Seattle (the 19th officially-recognized Transition Initiative in the United States), decided to take matters into their own hands and create one. Rather wonderful it is too, packed with activities and exercises to do with a group of people, it is quite special to think that my humble lil’ ole Transition Handbook would enthuse people sufficiently to create such a great resource. Download it here, take it, use it, let them know how it went….
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7 Apr 2010
With the recent exoneration of Phil Jones in the UEA ‘ClimateGate’ kerfuffle, the key lesson emerging from the whole thing is not that the science of climate change is somehow profoundly flawed, but rather that scientists are flawed human beings rather like the rest of us, subject to pomposity, ego, vanity, ill-temper and rudeness. The world of science and academia doesn’t always function like the ego-free collective pursuit of knowledge it is meant to, it can be obstructed by those beligerently trying to boost their reputations and funding streams. ‘Solar’ (the first novel I’ve read for a while) is a superbly executed journey through the world of one (fictitious) eminent climate scientist, warts and all. It is compelling, gripping, hilarious and informative, and definitely well worth the read.
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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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From time to time I hear about people doing Book Clubs based around the Transition Handbook. Thankfully, and entirely in a self-organising “wouldn’t-it-be-great-if-there-was-a-study-guide” kind of way, Joann Kerr, Susan Gregory, and Leo Brodie of Sustainable NE Seattle (the 19th officially-recognized Transition Initiative in the United States), decided to take matters into their own hands and create one. Rather wonderful it is too, packed with activities and exercises to do with a group of people, it is quite special to think that my humble lil’ ole Transition Handbook would enthuse people sufficiently to create such a great resource. Download it here, take it, use it, let them know how it went….
