Advances in Public Interest Accounting, Volume 7 (Advances in Public Interest Accounting)

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Hardbound.

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Coping With Workplace Change: Dealing With Loss and Grief (A Fifty-Minute Series Book)
J. Shep Jeffreys , and J. Shep Jeffries
Manufacturer: Crisp Learning
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Healing Grief at Work: 100 Practical Ideas After Your Workplace Is Touched by Loss (Healing Your Grieving Heart series)

Helping Grieving People--When Tears Are Not Enough: A Handbook for Care Providers

Voices of Bereavement: A Casebook for Grief Counselors (The Series in Death, Dying, and Bereavement)

Religious and Spiritual Issues in Counseling

Managing Change at Work: Leading People Through Organizational Transitions (A Fifty-Minute Series Book)

ASIN: 1560523085

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Develop supportive skills for managing grieving employees who are affected by layoffs, mergers, reorganizations and other massive changes.

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Though it is not widely recognized, modern industrial agriculture plays a major role in the rampant decline in biodiversity in the United States. Habitat destruction and fragmentation, displacement of native species and the introduction of exotic species, persecution of predators, and pollution of all kinds are just a few of its damaging ecological consequences.
Fortunately, a new vision for a more environmentally beneficial and sustainable agriculture is emerging. Such a vision begins with farms that gracefully meld within landscapes, pulsing with a wide range of native species. It combines implementation of landscape-level restoration efforts, natural systems farming research, and the community spirit of farmers' markets and local watershed stakeholders.
Presenting an inspiring look at this new conservation-based agriculture, Farming with the Wild offers vivid profiles of more than thirty innovative farms, ranches, and organizations in the U.S., together with more than one hundred revealing full-color photographs. The result is an on-the-ground picture of a new agrarian movement that aims to provide healthier food to Americans while restoring healthy ecosystems across the country.
Published in association with Watershed Media

Customer Reviews:

Farming the way it should be.......2003-12-01

Written for broad audience of "stakeholders" in the food system, from consumers to ranchers, Imhoff has done a great job of highlighting farmers and ranchers who are working to protect the environment and sustain family farmers. These farmers and ranchers are inspirational examples, and show that agriculture doens't have to destroy the planet while it feeds us. Carra's photos offer an enticing complement that gives the book a coffee-table feel.

Frozen Wild Blueberries: waking up frozen fruit with healthy blue color: Wild Blueberries lead the way in bringing 5-A-Day The Color Way to frozen produce.: An article from: Frozen Food Digest

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Frozen Wild Blueberries: waking up frozen fruit with healthy blue color: Wild Blueberries lead the way in bringing 5-A-Day The Color Way to frozen produce.: An article from: Frozen Food Digest

Manufacturer: Frozen Food Digest, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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This digital document is an article from Frozen Food Digest, published by Frozen Food Digest, Inc. on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1168 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Frozen Wild Blueberries: waking up frozen fruit with healthy blue color: Wild Blueberries lead the way in bringing 5-A-Day The Color Way to frozen produce.
Publication: Frozen Food Digest (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2003
Publisher: Frozen Food Digest, Inc.
Volume: 18 Issue: 5 Page: 10(2)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Farming with Tomorrow's Wild Weather
Amchem
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LU7ISQ

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Infrared Solar Physics contains the proceedings of the 154th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union held in Tucson, Arizona, March 2--5, 1992. Aimed at active workers and graduate students in solar physics, this volume provides the first comprehensive view of a rapidly expanding discipline that gives us a new perspective on the sun.
Measurements across the wide infrared spectral range -- here, from 1 mum to 1 mm -- can probe the solar atmosphere from below the visible surface through the outer reaches of the corona. Taking full advantage of revolutionary advances in detector technology, infrared observations from the ground, aircraft and space have led to a better understanding of solar magnetic fields, atmospheric structure and activity, and elemental abundances. The infrared has also provided new interpretive challenges, such as the appearance of the 12-mum emission lines of magnesium. These and other developments are discussed here by the leading contributors to the field, who also give their perspectives on the future of this rich field of study.

Book Description

Applications of Graph Theory and Topology in Inorganic Cluster and Coordination Chemistry is a text-reference that provides inorganic chemists with a rudimentary knowledge of topology, graph theory, and related mathematical disciplines. The book emphasizes the application of these topics to metal clusters and coordination compounds. The book's initial chapters present background information in topology, graph theory, and group theory, explaining how these topics relate to the properties of atomic orbitals and are applied to coordination polyhedra. Subsequent chapters apply these ideas to the structure and chemical bonding in diverse types of inorganic compounds, including boron cages, metal clusters, solid state materials, metal oxide derivatives, superconductors, icosahedral phases, and carbon cages (fullerenes). The book's final chapter introduces the application of topology and graph theory for studying the dynamics of rearrangements in coordination and cluster polyhedra.

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In the last thirty years, combinatorial mathematics has found itself at the heart of many technological applications. The aims of the conference on which this book is based were to stimulate combinatorial mathematicians to pursue new lines of research of potential practical importance, and to uncover the breadth of applications of the subject. Topics covered include neural networks, cryptography, radio frequency assignment for mobile telecommunications, coding theory, sequences for communications applications, interconnection networks, data types, knot theory, radar, parallel processing, network reliability, formal specification of programs and protocols, and combinatorial optimisation.

Bayesian Heuristic Approach to Discrete and Global Optimization: Algorithms, Visualization, Software, and Applications (Nonconvex Optimization and Its Applications)

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Bayesian Heuristic Approach to Discrete and Global Optimization: Algorithms, Visualization, Software, and Applications (Nonconvex Optimization and Its Applications)
J. Mockus , William Eddy , and Gintaras Reklaitis
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Engineering | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Bayesian decision theory is known to provide an effective framework for the practical solution of discrete and nonconvex optimization problems. This book is the first to demonstrate that this framework is also well suited for the exploitation of heuristic methods in the solution of such problems, especially those of large scale for which exact optimization approaches can be prohibitively costly. The book covers all aspects ranging from the formal presentation of the Bayesian Approach, to its extension to the Bayesian Heuristic Strategy, and its utilization within the informal, interactive Dynamic Visualization strategy. The developed framework is applied in forecasting, in neural network optimization, and in a large number of discrete and continuous optimization problems. Specific application areas which are discussed include scheduling and visualization problems in chemical engineering, manufacturing process control, and epidemiology. Computational results and comparisons with a broad range of test examples are presented. The software required for implementation of the Bayesian Heuristic Approach is included. Although some knowledge of mathematical statistics is necessary in order to fathom the theoretical aspects of the development, no specialized mathematical knowledge is required to understand the application of the approach or to utilize the software which is provided.
Audience: The book is of interest to both researchers in operations research, systems engineering, and optimization methods, as well as applications specialists concerned with the solution of large scale discrete and/or nonconvex optimization problems in a broad range of engineering and technological fields. It may be used as supplementary material for graduate level courses.

Graph Theory and Its Engineering Applications (Advanced Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

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Graph Theory and Its Engineering Applications (Advanced Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Wai-Kai Chen
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 9810218591

Operations Research and Discrete Analysis (Mathematics and Its Applications)

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Operations Research and Discrete Analysis (Mathematics and Its Applications)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Operations Research | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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General & Reference | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0792343344

Book Description

The contributions to this volume have all been translated from the second volume of the Russian journal Discrete Analysis and Operational Research, published at the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, in 1995.
The papers collected here give an excellent overview of recent Russian research in such topics as analysis of algorithms, combinatorics, coding theory, graphs, lower bounds for complexity of Boolean functions and scheduling theory, and can be seen as an update of the book Discrete Analysis and Operational Research, published by Kluwer in 1996.
Audience: This book will be of interest to specialists in discrete mathematics and computer science, and engineers.

Customer Reviews:

No Ordinary Soldier.......2002-02-26

What a pity that Miller was so narrowly focused that he did not even mention the important reforms brought about by this early proponent of mine safety and the formation of labor unions in the United States. Roy, the first mining inspector for the state of Ohio, was the author of A History of the Coal Miners, The Coal Mines, and the Practical Miner's Companion.

This self-taught Scottish immigrant went on to change the face of coal mining in America because his wound gave him the time to write and speak up for his friends underground in the mines.

Interesting but badly edited.......2001-04-03

Fallen Soldier is a portion of the Civil War diary of Andrew Roy. It is interesting as a portrayal of what happened to badly wounded men both on the battlefield and in later life. It certainly works as a story of medical incompetence (the result of low medical technology, not necessarily doctors' negligence). It really isn't particularly gory or harrowing to read -- very few Civil War memoirs are and this is consistent with the genre. What I found annoying about this book was the editing. The text has been cut down so as to only mention Roy's wounding and medical treatment, but the original document, as the editor admits in passing, was much longer. Some segments are given as appendices. Why not just give the entire diary as it was written, or at least include all the material not related to the wound as one appendix?

Unique, compelling.......1999-01-12

I am not generally a reader of Civil War books, but found this work to be an amazing insight into the life of a soldier, and into the human condition. Highly recommended.

Book Description

In this first volume of the series, the author explores the road he has traveled to reconceive his own body. Gil paints a self-portrait as compelling as it is ridiculous, creating a sort of fun-house mirror with which readers can laugh with him, hopefully long enough to enjoy their own actual transformation.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting Perspective.......2001-12-02

I very much enjoyed this book. Gil does a wonderful job of sharing his journey to a more peaceful co-existence with his body and his life. Autobiographical in nature, there are interesting pearls along the way. In addition, his workshop is awesome.

Book Description

This unconventional biography of Benjamin Franklin, the great American Renaissance man, explores examples of Franklin's diverse genius and accomplishments in different fields.

Among the topics explored are Franklin's views on women's issues, such as disapproving of impractical hoopskirts, supporting their education, and suggesting insurance for widows and spinsters. It describes his love of a good hoax, contributions to ballooning while an ambassador in France, experiments with the famous kite, and advances in heating houses. His work with money is also covered, including methods of printing money to confuse counterfeiters, a revolutionary way of making a print of a real leaf, and his updated portrait on the present $100 bill. Franklin's role as head of a commission to examine (and debunk) mesmerism is addressed.

No stranger to controversy, Franklin headed the first successful attempt to unify the colonies to create a country. This work shows that Franklin is more responsible than any other for the founding of the United States—and also that he was a leading cause of the French Revolution, providing the French with an example of a successful rebellion, lessons on how to shift power from the king, and ideas about erecting a constitutional government (in addition, he weakened the French royal treasury by extracting loans and gifts to support America).

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Military families sometimes have to spend a lot of time apart from each other while serving their country, with one or more of the parents deployed. The separation can be just a few days in length or many months. This children's book helps the family explain to the child how things will work while the parent is away and how to communicate over the distance until the day the family reunites. The writing style and art of the book enables each child, boy or girl, to relate to the story in a personal sense. This book was computer designed with a cut out page at the end allowing the child to write a letter and draw a picture for the deployed parent.

Customer Reviews:

Poor quality book, also oriented toward Navy........2006-07-20

This is the first book I have EVER returned. I had hoped, despite the cover, that this book would be applicable to children with parents in any branch of the military. It is NOT. It's very strictly Navy oriented, with dad getting on a ship and working on a ship. Also, the book is very poor quality for the price and the pictures are poorly done computer graphics. Skip this and go for another book on the subject!

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This book is part of my life
A Great Book

Going Away
Clancy Sigal
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by Her Bastard Son

ASIN: 088184103X

Customer Reviews:

This book is part of my life.......2006-07-10

This book is more of a memoir than a novel. I read it so often back in the late 1960s when I discovered it, that it became more like memory than a book I had read.

Back then, there were still folks around who boasted truthfully or untruthfully that they had been among people Sigal visited in the journey depicted in this great book.

It didn't matter to me. This was a book I savored, read every year or more frequently until the book became like part of my life. I always felt I had been there with Clancy Sigal.

What's interesting is the world of labor radicals, worker activists, writers, artists and down to earth non conformists that Sigal recalls either visiting them or in the huge flashback sections of this book. We get a good picture, from one point of view, of the battle between Reuther and the CP over leadership of the UAW, very thinly disguised.

Of course, what interested me is that his working class hero, talker about all this revolutionary and labor, never works for a minute in industry, but is going to Hollywood to try to be a screen writer. Yet, Clancy still is drawn to the workers' fights. I got reminded of him and this book today seeing a post from him on a labor history listerv. He's still going with a new book about his momma the labor organizer!

Once you read this book, it will become part of your life as well.

A Great Book.......2004-02-15

This is one of those books that is a neglected masterpiece. Read it as soon as possible.

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Original, thoughtful, engaging
Lost In Translation
Wonderful Read, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny
HILARIOUS "LOST IN TRANSLATION"
Fast-paced and Funny

Going Away Party
Laura Pedersen
Manufacturer: Story Line Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1586540106

Book Description

Winner of Story Line's first Three Oaks Prize in Fiction, supported by Bloomsbury Books of Ashland, Oregon.

Selected from more than 600 entrants, Going Away Party stood out for its brisk pace, sassy, streetwise patter, and surprising, compassionate conclusion. Twenty-year-old Jess MacGuire, a good Catholic girl, wrestles with her uncertain future while her family is away on vacation. When her mother's ex-lover appears, she invites him to stay...until they're caught red-handed. An edgy, optimistic affirmation of love and family life.

Laura Pedersen was chosen as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans by President Clinton in 1994. The youngest person ever to have a seat on the floor of the American Stock Exchange, she wrote her first book, Play Money, about that experience, and a second, Street-Smart Career Guide, about entrepeneurship. A former assistant to Joan Rivers, she writes comedy and performs at the Improv and other venues. She has appeared on Oprah, the David Letterman Show, and Good Morning, America, and is a columnist for the Sunday New York Times.

Customer Reviews:

Original, thoughtful, engaging.......2004-02-21

Dove into this after enjoying Pedersen's wonderfully heartbreaking but humorous novel "Last Call." Now we move from Brooklyn, NY, to the Midwest. Anyone who has ever been a teenager or attempted to raise one will love "Going Away Party," which sums up so many of the conflicts inherent in coming of age today. Technology and the high cost of education have changed the landscape and not always for the better. It also contains a romance with an age difference that serves to show how our perspective on life changes as we mature. What I especially enjoyed was that drugs, abuse, and violence were not needed to make the passage to adulthood dramatic and fraught. It's angst filled enough without those and Pedersen also uses deft humor to keep things moving toward a surprising and touching ending.

Lost In Translation.......2004-02-08

Wow, this really is a really hilarious version of that movie "Lost In Translation," though the book came out a few years before the movie. What was most interesting to me was that you can read nothing into it and just enjoy the story and the one-liners, or you can read A LOT into it, about life and love and coping in the modern world. I'd be interested in hearing the author's intention. I enjoyed the book and my 16-year-old daughter not only loved it but won't give it back.

Wonderful Read, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny.......2004-01-31

This is definitely a riotous "Lost In Translation," though I see from the date that this book came first. And there's no Tokyo, just the good old American midwest. But it's a wonderful tale about two peple meeting in (very) unusual circumstances and searching for meaning in their lives. All the Catholic girl guilt resonated deeply -- dating on Saturday night and then going to church on Sunday morning. And also the boys in the family always being allowed more freedom. I had no idea how Pedersen was going to wind this one up but she managed to do so nicely, complete with suprises and laughter. Every mother will want her daughter to read this book in order to demonstrate that we're not as bad as you think!

HILARIOUS "LOST IN TRANSLATION".......2004-01-19

I first read this book a few years ago but when I saw the movie "Lost In Translation" the other night I couldn't believe the similarity and went back and enjoyed it a second time. I didn't like the movie as much as all the reviewers but I'll see anything with Bill Murray. HOWEVER, for all the people saying how good that movie is, GOING AWAY PARTY is also a story about two dislocated adults, a young woman and an older man, that takes place in the US Midwest. Only tt is laugh-out-loud funny on almost every page and has a terrific ending.

Fast-paced and Funny.......2003-12-18

Great take on the conflicts of being a young person and trying to follow the rules set down by your parents, the guidelines of your religion, and the expectations of society. Terrific dialogue and a surprise ending. Laugh-out-loud funny!

I'm Going to Read (Level 3): Go Away, Crows! (I'm Going to Read Series)

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I'm Going to Read (Level 3): Go Away, Crows! (I'm Going to Read Series)

Manufacturer: Sterling
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 140272103X

Book Description

Caw, caw, caw: the crows have come to Matt and Isabel's home, and she doesn't like it at all. "Get off our fence! Get off our steps! Get off our porch!" she cries. But the crows just don't listen. Every day they keep coming back. Then one day Matt comes up with a new idea. Will it work? Santiago Cohen's colorful, folk-art style illustrations make the escalating escapes especially entertaining.

Going Places: Children Living With Cerebral Palsy (Don't Turn Away)

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Going Places: Children Living With Cerebral Palsy (Don't Turn Away)
Thomas Bergman
Manufacturer: Gareth Stevens Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Health Care Delivery | Administration & Policy | Medicine | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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I'm Going to Run Away
Joan Hanson
Manufacturer: Smithmark Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Baby-3 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0822875764

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About Going Away
Hannah Ikeda; Tudyman Lai
Manufacturer: Stanwix
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000Q7NTEQ

About going away, (Functional basic reading series)

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About going away, (Functional basic reading series)
Hannah Ikeda Lai
Manufacturer: Stanwix House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Decivilis: A going away from civilization

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Decivilis: A going away from civilization
H. B Lord
Manufacturer: Schenectady Herold Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00073BCTI

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GOING AWAY
Clancy Sigal
Manufacturer: Dell Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000RAZECM

Book Description

Imagine you are first in line at a potluck buffet. The spread includes not just food and water, but all the materials needed for shelter, clothing, healthcare, and education. How do you know how much to take? How much is enough to leave for your neighbors behind you - not just the six billion people, but the wildlife, and the as-yet-unborn?

In the face of looming ecological disaster, many people feel the need to change their own lifestyles as a tangible way of transforming our unsustainable culture. Radical Simplicity is the first book that guides the reader to a personal sustainability goal, then offers a process to monitor progress to a lifestyle that is equitable amongst all people, species, and generations. It employs three tools to help readers begin their customized journey to simplicity:

It builds on steps from Your Money or Your Life so readers can design their own personal economics to save money, get free of debt, and align their work with their values.
It uses refined tools from Our Ecological Footprint so readers can measure how much nature is needed to supply all they consume and absorb their waste.
And by advocating time alone in wild nature, it opens readers to another reality with humanity as one species among many on a complex and inter-related planet.

Combining lyrical narrative, compassionate advocacy and absorbing science, Radical Simplicity is a practical, personal answer to 21st century challenges that will appeal as much to Cultural Creatives and students as to spiritual seekers, policy makers and sustainability professionals.

Customer Reviews:

Very important and thoughtful reading........2007-06-03

It's encouraging to read a book so full of personal integrity and hope. So many people are unwilling to face the facts of the future before us. Very few people will read this book, but for those that do it will be a godsend to know that there are others that feel the same level of empathetic responsiblity. There are not enough books of this type, and fewer authors qualified to write them. The only other work I have recently encountered that is of the same level of accountability as well as offering a real means of living benignly is Jerome Fitzgeralds "Sea-steading." I recommend this as well.

A balm for painful truth.......2006-01-18

Merkel is a gentle soul whose moment of truth came when he saw the Exxon Valdez disaster on TV. Realizing his lifestyle contributed directly to this sort of environmental destruction and a host of other world problems, he set out to do something about it. Travels in Kerala (in India) and among the Chumash taught him how to live a simpler life with less waste, fewer things, and greater connections to the land and people. As he reduced the environmental stress that his life caused, he also found that his life became less stressed.

But he doesn't leave it at that. He's an engineer, and he gives you the analytical tools he used to evaluate the effects of his lifestyle on the world. First the bad news: if you make more than $10,000 a year or have more than one child, you're almost certainly using more than your share of Earth's resources (pages 70 and 84), which contributes to starvation and extinction. Now the good news: using tools borrowed from two other books (Your Money or Your Life and Our Ecological Footprint), Merkel shows how you can take charge of the flows of material in your life. He walks you through examples such as the environmental cost of e-mail vs. snail-mail (in his case, snail-mail had the smaller footprint; in my case, e-mail did).

Let's face it, the process of coming to terms with your own plunder of the world is stressful: a combination of accounting and soul-searching. But the end goal is a sustainable relationship with nature and a simpler, less stressful life. Radical simplicity provides the tools you need to get started.

Very inspiring, but gets too technical.......2005-12-17

I would give five stars to the first 5 or so chapters without question. Merkel provides a very inspiring background to his topic and some great examples. The thing I didn't like about the book was that once you get into the more technical aspects, it loses its energizing quality a bit and gets slightly confusing. I would have enjoyed the book better if the beginning was expanded to provide more examples and maybe the rest of it was offered as a seperate workbook. However, even if you read only the beginning, this is a great book to get you started on living more sustainably

Closer to the Bone.......2004-03-21

"The year 1978" says author Jim Merkel, "was a special year in both Earth's history and human history, and it passed without notice. It was the year humans claimed the entire sustainable yield of Earth." Since that time, the stakes have only risen. Humanity now gobbles up some 20 percent more than of the earth's bioproductivity. "Why, then, hasn't the system begun to collapse?" you ask.

The short answer is that it is, although the word collapse is a bit misleading. Over the last century, wars have claimed 175 million lives; and most, if not all, of those wars were fought to eliminate other humans, gain control land and resources, or maintain geopolitical and economic security. A third of the world's children suffer from malnutrition, of which tens of thousands die everyday, while, in the same amount of time, an estimated 100 to 1000 species vanish from the face of the planet. These are just a few symptoms of ecological collapse.

In order to talk about sustainability, says Merkel, we have to talk about ecological footprints. Your ecological footprint is the amount of bioproductive land and sea area in continuous production to supply all you use and to absorb all you waste. Global sustainability, then, is a combined ecological footprint of humanity that does not tax earth faster than it can regenerate. When humanity takes from the earth faster than it can replenish, things breakdown: fisheries collapse, soils erode, species vanish, aquifers run dry, etc. - things you might read about on page A-14 of the newspaper everyday.

"But how would I know if I am taking too much?" you ask. Ecological foot printing, says Merkel, is the best way to take the guesswork out of sustainability. "It allows us to measure our progress." But then, what is progress? To some, paving over the entire world and covering it with skyscrapers, channeling every brook and stream to flow through culverts, and relying on large multinational corporations to synthesize our food from genetically-modified seeds sounds appealing, perhaps even sustainable. To others, sustainability entails reverting to something like the Stone Age and hunting in the forest with blunt instruments for wild game.

Acknowledging a diversity of perspectives, Merkel merely asks us discover and then live according to our personal values. "What is your worldview?" he asks. The bottom line is that "there are 28.2 billion acres of bioproductive land on Earth - the total surface area minus the deep oceans, deserts, icecaps and built-up land. When divided between six billion people, each person gets a 4.7-acre share" - and no more. But this figure assumes humanity utilizes all of the earth for itself. So a better question would be, 'How much of my 4.7-acre share do I want to use for myself and how much do I want to leave for other life forms?'

After quizzing you about your preferred tax on the planet, desired world population, and level of equity with other human and nonhuman inhabitants, he then shows you how many acres of land you can utilize while keeping in line with your values. This is your "sustainability goal." For example, my desired sustainability goal was based on a two-child family and absolute equity among humans, leaving 90% of the earth as untouched wilderness, and leaving me personally with a mere 1.45794 acres. Radical simplicity, indeed! It looks like I'll have to ditch a kid or two.

The point, which should not be lost in the math, is to gain an objective picture of our individual impact on the biosphere. Once we have that, we can start simplifying our life - and, as it turns out, living 'closer to the bone' is a lot more carefree and fun than, say, the daily corporate grind. Merkel himself is an example of this. Although he has managed to live on an budget of merely 5,000 dollars a year - to avoid supporting the military industrial complex via taxation - for the last 20 years, his life has been full of adventure, relaxation, and a certain joy de vivre many of us have never known.

Along with the charts, mathematical formulas and statistics, this book is peppered with interesting anecdotes about those twenty years spent visiting indigenous cultures, biking foreign countries and backpacking in the woods. An amazing man, with a radical vision of environmental responsibility, Merkel is also living proof of just how enjoyable and fulfilling `simple living' can be.

j.w.k.

Let's Get Radical!.......2003-11-05

I have been waiting for this book for a long time. Seriously, there is a hole in western consciousness and in our publications about REALITY---the fact that western culture is ruining the planet, and how do we as individuals make a new way? With more calculaton tables than I liked, but interspersed with interesting, inspiring, thought-provoking world experience, philosophical musings and present-day challenges in carving a sustainable lifestyle, Merkel's book arrests the imagination of the reader. I think about this subject every day and I have Merkel to thank for pointing me toward concrete ways to `live as if life truly matters.' If you're looking for related hardcore simplicity (which isn't really so simple in this culture, is it?) check out www.myfootprint.org (more of Merkel's work) and Primal Conscious Living on the web---a couple in Georgia making sustainability real in their daily lives: http://geocities.com/newlibertyvillage/earthstar.htm

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