Category Archives: Books Authors V thru Z

“The Spirit Level” by Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

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ISBN 978-0-241-95429-4. “The Spirit Level – Why Equality is Better for Everyone” written by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket was published by Penguin with new postscript in 2010 (originally by Allen Lane in 2009). The authors are both Professors of Epidemiology in London and York. That means they are bright people who trace the root causes of disease and ill health in human populations; why do some groups of people develop certain problems whilst others do not? What they have found (and demonstrate in this book) may not be totally original but they have bought all the evidence together in one place. And, oh boy – is this dynamite. We may be familiar with quality-of-life issues but, it seems, we didn’t know the half of it. Continue reading →

Robert & Brenda Vale “Time to eat the dog?”

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ISBN 978-0-500-28790-3. “Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living” by Robert and Brenda Vale was published by Thames & Hudson in 2009. For your money you get 384 pages with an Introduction, seven Chapters, a Conclusion, Notes, Sources, Resources and an Index. I suppose a title like that is designed to be incendiary given how close the English are to their pets. The Vales certainly know how to sex it up. For some the very idea couldn’t be more offensive than if they had advised us to eat our children. Really. All the publicity this book got at its launch in 2009 came about precisely due to its coverage of the sustainability footprint of our pets. Continue reading →

Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee “Questioning Collapse”

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ISNB 978-0-521-73366-3. “Questioning Collapse – Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability and the Aftermath of Empire” edited by Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. The paperback is 374 pages long including a list of figures, list of contributors, preface, acknowledgements, introduction, fourteen chapters in four sections and an index. The title somewhat gives the game away as this is billed as the answer to Jared Diamond’s 1997 work “Guns, Germs and Steel” and his 2005 opus “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”. Continue reading →

Piers Warren “How to Store Your Garden Produce”

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ISBN 978 1 900322 17 1. “How to Store Your Garden Produce – The key to self-sufficiency” was written by Piers Warren and published by Green Books Ltd in this revised and enlarged edition in 2008. It seems further recipes were added in the 2009 reprint – this 143 page book boasts two parts, intro and index. The look and feel of the printed book is the same as Charles Dowding’s “Organic Gardening – The natural no dig way” so you get large sections of text with only token illustrations although the centre section boasts some colour photo’s (none of which add much in the way of explanation). This is how gardening books were produced for many years up until the 1970′s when the Readers Digest hit the market with what we call the ‘coffee table’ style of publishing. Continue reading →