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Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth (World As Home, The) | 
 enlarge | Creator: Bill Mckibben
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $8.52
You Save: $6.48 (43%)
New (31) Used (14) from $6.99
Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 94769
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 232
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 1571313001
Dewey Decimal Number: 304.28
EAN: 9781571313003
ASIN: 1571313001
Publication Date: January 12, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Divided into three sections, Hope, Human and Wild profiles the efforts of three caring communities to preserve wilderness and reverse environmental devastation. They include the reforestation of McKibben’s home territory, New York’s Adirondack Mountains; solving traffic and pollution problems in the densely populated Curitiba, Brazil; and how the citizens of Kerala, India have demonstrated that quality of life doesn’t depend on overconsumption of resources. This edition features a new introduction that revisits these places and explores how they’ve changed over the years.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Once Again December 29, 2008
Another evangelical trying to make a dime on the idea of God. These guys are the ones who should be listed on a website!
 Yes, Hope October 13, 2008
I work with college students, and occasionally direct them to read the chapter on Curitaba. That alone will lift your spirits. What if a government actually decided to do things right? Here's what could happen.
This is a book of stories. As gripping as any stories can be. We need these stories because most people aren't heartened by policy analysis or political talking points. We need to hear that in some places, people made the right decisions and their lives are better for it.
Great book.
The end of hopelessness? November 20, 2007
This exploration followed McKibben's THE END OF NATURE (Random House, 1989) by five years, and represents an effort by the author to find reasons for optimism after having so thoroughly examined our termination of the wilderness. He found some certifiable success stories, and the good cheer he offers here fits well with my own growing sense that we can and will restore the earth. Starting from the eastern U.S. where the recovery of the hardwood forests over the past century offers a remarkable example of the melding of urbanization and greening, he circles the globe to find other signs of change. While the reforestation of the east has been largely inadvertent -- created by shifts of agriculture and technology -- and is today threatened by industrial chip mills eager to turn woodland into paper towels, the clearcuts of the 18th and 19th century have regrown from New Hampshire to the Deep South. Elsewhere there are equally significant changes afoot. In Brazil, a country prey to the developing world's four horsemen of poverty, population growth, exploitation and corruption, one city has designed itself out of the mire. Curitiba is a decidedly un-third world oasis amidst the gloom. It has remade itself in its own image and has become a walkable, clean, prosperous and civil community. It has a higher percentage of car owners than Rio, but a vastly higher proportional use of public transportation. It has rejected the Interstate syndrome and performs its people-moving on tree shaded, human-scale streets. The poor are helped to buy land and build their own homes instead of squatting in shanty towns. Street children are employed and fed. The poor can trade bags of collected garbage for bags of food, solving three problems at once: street cleanup, feeding the hungry, and employing local farmers. And on, and on ... proving that urban planning doesn't have to be stupid, inhuman, short sighted and costly. Another example from the other side of the world comes from tropical India. Kerala, with a per capita income one-seventieth that of the U.S., has a higher literacy rate (100%) and a similar life-expectancy. The birth rate is close to our own and falling faster. Like Curitiba its quality of life stands head and shoulders above its region, nation and third-world expectations. It does this with a population the size of Canada's squeezed into a land area the size of Vancouver Island. "Kerala is the one large human population on earth which currently meets the sustainability criteria of simultaneous small families and low consumption," reports Will Alexander of San Francisco's Food First Institute (as quoted by McKibben). With the author, our eyes are opened to new possibilities emerging from ancient ways. Again and again McKibben serves up rich lessons about the shift necessary in both our technology and our psychology if we are to turn away from the consumerist passion which is destroying our life support. He searched for and found hope that we can go and do likewise. This book is a balm and a challenge and a wonderful read. Once more, Bill McKibben has laid claim to his spot on my short list of favorite, most readable writers. Attaboy!
A hopeful look at living well October 28, 2007
Bill McKibben takes an original view of some environmental issues and some solutions. I was especially pleased to read about Curitiba in Brazil and the Kerala in India. This town in Brazil and state in India show that we humans can live full happy lives on our planet while using less resources. I was also pleased to read about reforestation in New England. This short hopeful book is definitely worth reading.
This book changed my life September 29, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In it, there are stories about how entire communities have been positively transformed by the action of a few determined individuals. This book will have you contemplating how you can affect change in your own community, and will give you the courage to enact it.
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