As a farmer with decades spent working in fields, Scott Chaskey has been shaped by daily attention to the earth. A leader in the international Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement, he has combined a longstanding commitment to food sovereignty and organic farming with a belief that humble attention to microbial life and diversity of species provides invaluable lessons for building healthy human communities.Along the way, even while planning rotations of fi...

Scott Chaskey—working farmer, poet, and spiritual father of the community farming movement—considers "the web of biodiversity and resilience at the heart of our cultural inheritance" by masterfully weaving history, politics, botany, literature, mythology, and memoir into a beautiful and instructive book.It's hard to think of a subject more fundamental to the sustenance of the human race than seeds. Having coevolved with the Earth's plants, insects, and animals, seeds are entwined w...

In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Joan Gussow, and Verlyn Klinkenborg's The Rural Life, This Common Ground is an inspirational evocation of a life lived close to the earth, written by the head farmer at one of the country's first community-supported farms. By reflecting on four seasons of activity at his beloved Quail Hill Farm in eastern Long Island, Scott Chaskey offers stirring insight into the connections between land and the human family. Whether wr...

As a farmer with decades spent working in fields, Scott Chaskey has been shaped by daily attention to the earth. A leader in the international Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement, he has combined a longstanding commitment to food sovereignty and organic farming with a belief that humble attention to microbial life and diversity of species provides invaluable lessons for building healthy human communities.Along the way, even while planning rotations of fi...

"Provides a sturdy literary exoskeleton to the field of human insectivory . . . it entertains as it enlightens" (Daniella Martin, author of Edible).Meet the beetles: there are millions and millions of them and many fewer of the rest of us—mammals, birds, and reptiles. Since before recorded history, humans have eaten insects. While many get squeamish at the idea, entomophagy—people eating insects—is a possible way to ensure a sustainable and secure food sup...

“Fascinating...Buchmann’s knowledge and enthusiasm jump off the page.” —The Wall Street Journal“An extraordinarily good book.” —Edward O. WilsonThe lively and definitive story of the beauty, sexuality, lore, economics, and ecology of the world ’s flowers, written by a devoted scientist and illustrated with his stunning photographs.Flowers—and the fruits they often become—feed, clothe, and inspire us. Indeed...

WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING“Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture.” —Science FridayThe author of Sounds Wild and Broken and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s most magnificent networkers — trees...

"A poetic and remarkably fertile exploration of the relationship between human beings and the natural environment."—Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian"I'm very grateful to have this book."—Ursula K. Le GuinThe acclaimed and award-winning book about what a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planetA Flavorwire and Times Higher Education Book of the YearMatsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the w...

A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism"Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. Why not ...

Recycling is good, isn’t it?In this visionary book, chemist Michael Braungart and architect William McDonough challenge this status quo and put forward a manifesto for an intriguing and radically different philosophy of environmentalism."Reduce, reuse, recycle”. This is the standard “cradle to grave” manufacturing model dating back to the Industrial Revolution that we still follow today. In this thought-provoking read, the authors propose t...

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive.It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with ...

A “lively and colorful” (The Washington Post) contribution to the complex and important conversation on genetically modified foods unraveling the science, myths, and politics behind the continuing battle over biotech food.For most people, the global war over genetically modified foods is a distant and confusing one. The battles are conducted in the mystifying language of genetics.A handful of corporate “life scienc...