Book List Addition: The Wild Vegan Cookbook

The Wild Vegan Cookbook
A Forager's Culinary Guide (in the Field or in the Supermarket) to Preparing and Savoring Wild (and Not So Wild) Natural Foods
by "Wildman" Steve Brill
Harvard Common Press, 2010

No one knows wild fruits, vegetables, and herbs more intimately than "Wildman" Steve Brill.

In this book, Brill describes how he forages year-round for local, organic foods in New York City.

Beginning farmers committed to launching an organic operation and experienced farmers hoping to transition from traditional farming techniques will find all the information they need. The organic certification process is lengthy and demanding, but author Ann Larkin Hansen clarifies every USDA requirement and offers complete advice on selecting equipment, tending the land, caring for animals, and marketing farm products.

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Book List Addition: The Organic Farming Manual

The Organic Farming Manual
A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Running a Certified Organic Farm
by Anne Larkin Hansen
Storey Publishing, 2010

As the organic food market continues to expand, so too do the opportunities for small farmers. For the farmer, the benefits of running an organic operation are great.

This book is a comprehensive guide to growing, certifying, and marketing organic produce, grains, meat, and dairy.

Beginning farmers committed to launching an organic operation and experienced farmers hoping to transition from traditional farming techniques will find all the information they need. The organic certification process is lengthy and demanding, but author Ann Larkin Hansen clarifies every USDA requirement and offers complete advice on selecting equipment, tending the land, caring for animals, and marketing farm products.

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The View from Lazy Point

A Compassionate Mind

"In the panic among the fishes and in the frenzying terns, it’s also evident that nature has neither sentiment nor mercy. What it does have is life, truth, and logic. And it strives for what it cannot have: an end to danger, an assurance of longevity, a moment’s peace, and a comfortable death. It’s like us all, because we are natural.

"What anyone needs to know about mercy, one can learn by watching nature strive, seeing people struggle, and realizing what a compassionate mind could add to the picture. So I’m also struck that we who have named ourselves “wise humans” — Homo sapiens — haven’t quite realized that nature, civilization, peace, and human dignity are all facets of the same gemstone, and that abrasion of one tarnishes the whole."

The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina
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Review: The View from Lazy Point

The View from Lazy Point
A Natural Year in an Unnatural World
by Carl Safina
Henry Holt and Co., 2011

Following the course of four seasons and the four directions of the compass, this philosophical memoir chronicles a year of the author's life as he travels from his coastal home on Long Island to Antarctica and the Arctic, and from islands in the Caribbean to the western edges of the Pacific Ocean trying to understand, as a scientist, how the natural world is faring in the face of serious environmental challenges and what role humans have in its fate.

As he follows scientists studying troubled parrotfish in the coral reefs off the coast of Venezuela, managing salmon populations in Alaska, maintaining the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard (an archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole) and documenting the decline of penguin populations in Antarctica he concludes that old notions and beliefs of humans are compromising the survival of species and the ecosystems that support them.

"Science has marched forward. But civilization's values remain rooted in philosophies, religious traditions, and ethical frameworks devised many centuries ago," he writes, making the same observation in different words at several points in the book.

What is needed, he concludes, is greater development of the uniquely human trait known a compassion.

"Compassion doesn't simply mean caring for poor people or putting band-aids on need. It seeks to remedy sources of suffering," he explains. "It means we require a clear, peaceful way of providing what the world can bear - and knowing when enough is too much. In part, it means realizing that far fewer people would mean far less suffering."

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Review: Growing Tasty Tropical Plants

Growing Tasty Tropical Plants
in any home, anywhere
by Laurelynn Martin and Byron Martin
Storey Publishing, 2010

For those of us living in cool, northern climates, the idea of growing tropical fruit at home for consumption has been a dream that few have dared pursue... until now.

Laurelynn and Byron Martin, third-generation greenhouse growers in Connecticut, have recently started supplying tropical plants to home gardeners who are growing them on decks, patios and in containers indoors all across North America.

"Growing Tasty Tropical Plants in any home, anywhere" documents their conviction that almost everyone can enjoy the taste of the tropics without leaving home, provided they have the proper cultivars.

"One of the keys to success with tropical container fruits is providing the right environment for the plants as they grow and mature," they explain.

"Some types need a winter cool period, while others do best in warm conditions year-round. Some tropicals do well in partial sun, but many of them will produce fruit only when the grow in very bright conditions, such as a sunny windowsill, sunroom, or conservatory during the winter. If you don't have a sunroom or some large south-facing windows, then you'll need to explore using supplemental lighting for these plants."

The Martins profile 47 fruiting tropical plants in their text, from the well-known citrus fruits to the exotics like acerola, dwarf pomegranate and papaya and even chocolate, coffee, cinnamon, vanilla and sugarcane plants. An artist’s sketch and close up photograph of foliage, fruit and flower is included with each featured plant along with detailed instructions on cultivation, care and harvest.

"If you're brand new to container gardening, it's a good idea to start with plants that grow quickly and can tolerate a range ot temperatures," the Martins advise. These include coffee, fig, ‘Meyer’ lemon, naranjilla, orangeberry, tree tomato, and yerba mate plants.

This book invites readers to a gardening adventure rich with sunny flavors and exotic fragrances, growing fruits once forbidden beyond the tropics.

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Review: The Startup Game

The Startup Game
Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs
by William H. Draper and Eric Schmidt
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Co-authored by one of the best known and most respected venture capitalists, William Draper, this book is an autobiographical account of 40 years of investing in entrepreneurs and their ideas.

Draper uses stories of risky investments, cagey CEOs and rancorous board meetings to illustrate how he evaluates innovations and their innovators. Object lessons drawn from his involvement with Skype, OpenTable, Hotmail, Prolacta BioScience, Baidu, Selectica and dozens of other high-tech firms make for fascinating reading.

Draper sums up much of his message in "The Top Ten Avoidable Mistakes of Entrepreneurs" where he elaborates on the following preventable blunders:

* Creating overly optimistic projections about market size and customer acquisitions.
* Underestimating timelines.
* Trying to do everything yourself.
* Failing to master the elevator pitch.
* Not downsizing when necessary.
* Being inflexible.
* Not developing a clear marketing plan.
* Building a board that consists only of friends.
* Not taking action in a recession.
* Not knowing the right way to approach venture capitalists.

Anyone expecting to meet with venture capitalists now or in the future would be well advised to read this text carefully and take its lessons to heart.

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The View from Lazy Point

Life on the Edge

"The coast is an edgy place. Living on the coast presents certain stark realities and a wild, bare beauty. Continent confronts ocean. Weather intensifies. It's a place of tide and tantrum; of flirtations among fresh and saltwaters, forests and shores; of tense negotiations with an ocean that gives much but demands more. Every year the raw rim that is this coast gets hammered and reshaped like molten bronze. This place roils with power and a sometimes terrible beauty. The guessing, the risk; in a way we're all thrill seekers here."

The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World by Carl Safina
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Book List Addition: Collage of Myself

Collage of Myself
Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass
by Matt Miller
University of Nebraska Press, 2010

Collage of Myself presents a groundbreaking account of the creative story behind America’s most celebrated collection of poems. In the first book-length study of Walt Whitman’s journals and manuscripts, Matt Miller demonstrates that until approximately 1854 (only a single year before the first publication of Leaves of Grass), Whitman — who once speculated that Leaves would be a novel or a play — was unaware that his ambitions would assume the form of poetry at all.

Collage of Myself details Whitman’s discovery of a remarkable new creative process that allowed him to transform a diverse array of texts into poems such as “Song of Myself” and “The Sleepers.”

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Book List Addition: Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares

Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares
The Love, Lore, and Mystique of Mushrooms
by Greg A. Marley
Chelsea Green, 2010

Throughout history, people have had a complex and confusing relationship with mushrooms. Are fungi food or medicine, beneficial decomposers or deadly "toadstools" ready to kill anyone foolhardy enough to eat them? In fact, there is truth in all these statements.

In Chanterelle Dreams and Amanita Nightmares, author Greg Marley reveals some of the wonders and mysteries of mushrooms, and our conflicting human reactions to them.

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Book List Addition: But Rabbits Don't Climb Trees

But Rabbits Don't Climb Trees
by Marsh Rat Annie
iUniverse, 2010

In this poetry and short story collection, fact and fantasy are cleverly combined to create a light-hearted look at the wild side of life in the coastal marshlands of South Carolina - through the eyes of the animals.

Marsh Rat Annie, the author, relies on her years of experience in caring for and raising young animals in combination with her imagination and knowledge to personify marsh critters.

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Review: Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar

Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar
How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success
by James Marcus Bach
Chronicle Books, 2009

Many people who failed to thrive in a traditional classroom setting have gone on to become highly successful in business, industry, arts and even the sciences. Despite low grades, none lacked intelligence. Instead, they developed their own nontraditional learning styles that helped them achieve in their chosen fields .

James Marcus Bach, son of the Richard Bach who wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is one such example. He dropped out of school with an 8th grade education, and yet by his early 20's he had became a software tester at Apple Computers.

Part autobiography and part self-help book, Bach explains in these pages why he didn't get much of an eduation in schools, yet was able to educate himself. He outlines his unique style of education in these pages, providing the reader a curriculum guide for self-education.

Bach's primary lesson is that the real key to getting an eduation, and staying educated, is a love of learning.

“The pattern I experienced at Apple would be confirmed almost everywhere I traveled in the computer industry: most people have put themselves on intellectual autopilot. Most don’t study on their own initiative, but only when they are forced to do so. Even when they study, they choose to study the obvious and conventional subjects. This has the effect of making them more alike instead of more unique. It’s an educational herd mentality.”

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Fire in the Forest

Climate Change

"Forests contain a large proportion of the carbon held in all terrestial ecosystems, and therefore wildland fires can produce a significant amount of GHGs, which in turn contribute to climate change... This means that as the climate changes there would be more fire and more GHG emissions, which would further accelerate the rate of climate change."

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Book List Addition: Fire in the Forest

Fire in the Forest
by Peter Thomas and Robert McApline
Cambridge University Press, 2010

How destructive or beneficial are forest fires to wildlife? Should we be trying to reduce or increase the amount of fire in forests? How are forest fires controlled, and why does this sometimes fail? What effect will climate change have?

These and many other questions are answered in this richly illustrated book, written in non-technical language.

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Book List Addition: The Heart of the Sound

The Heart of the Sound
An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost
by Marybeth Holleman
Bison Books, 2010

How does one recover from disaster? That question is at the heart of Marybeth Holleman’s lyrical, elegiac response to the repercussions of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. Intertwining the destruction of an ecosystem, the disintegration of her marriage, and her emerging identity as a new mother, Holleman explores the resiliency of nature—both wild and human—and the ways in which that resiliency is tested.

While much of nature writing is about the search for an unspoiled landscape, The Heart of the Sound is about what happens when such a place is irrevocably damaged.

In language rich with passion and hard-won insight and imbued with descriptions that give voice to the place, Holleman creates a captivating story of a woman who found her Eden in the sweeping fjords of Alaska’s Prince William Sound only to almost lose it to ecological tragedy. Speaking as a witness and survivor, she discovers what it means to love what remains.

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