I’m With the Bears: Short Stories From a Damaged PlanetEdited by Mark Martin (Verso Books, 200 pp., October 2011)
MoreSacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein (Evolver Editions, 496 pp., paperback: $22.95, Online: Free, July 2011)
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How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachersby Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Kathleen Pringle(Timber Press, 224 pp., $24.95, June 2010)
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Free For All: Fixing School Food in America by Janet Poppendieck(University of California Press, 368 pp., $17.95, January 2010)
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Seeds of Discentby Nic Esposito(Bobcat Coveside Books, 300 pp., $20, March 2011)
The descent of plant roots into Philadelphia’s trashed soils is the most essential dissent against America’s failing economy, especially when these roots grow food, says author Nic Esposito. A 28-year-old West Philly farmer, Esposito’s first novel, Seeds of Discent, appears inspired by, if not a
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Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farmby Erin Byers Murray(St. Martin’s Press, 368 pp., $24.99, October 2011)
Boston-based journalist Erin Byers Murray quit her full-time job as a lifestyle reporter to go work on an oyster farm. Shucked is both a personal memoir of the physical, emotional, and mental challenges she faced to succeed at
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Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild Worldby Emma MarrisBloomsbury Publishing (2011), $25
"Rambunctious gardening is proactive and optimistic; it creates more and more nature as it goes, rather than just building walls around the nature we have left,” proclaims author Emma Marris in the first chapter of Rambunctious Garden.
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Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World’s Greatest Wildlife Rescueby William StolzenburgBloomsbury (2011), $26
For city dwellers, rats are a nuisance and a health hazard. But for isolated island species, rats are a death sentence, as William Stolzenburg demonstrates in his new book, Rat Island.
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The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Timeby David Sloan Wilson Little Brown (2011), $25.99
In David Sloan Wilson’s fifth book, the evolutionary biologist chronicles his attempt to use Darwin’s theory of evolution to improve the quality of life in his town of Binghamton, N.Y. It’s an ambitious goal, especially
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When you walk the walk like John Francis, you don’t necessarily need to talk the talk. Planetwalker: 17 Years of Silence, 22 Years of Walking is the true story of a native Philadelphian who, after witnessing a devastating 1971 California oil spill, chose to abstain from all motorized transportation. Instead, Francis walked. When his walking
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