Customer Reviews

Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (CultureAmerica)

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Living in London in the early eighties I used to frequent a sort of leftie/anarchist bookshop near Campden Lock. There I discovered the world of the Whole Earth Review and The Whole Earth Catalogues. Just as well I did too or I would have ended only reading Soldier of Fortune and military books like the rest of my "squaddie" mates. I was in the Army at the time.

What really captivated me about the Whole Earth was the idea that there was an alternative to 9 to 5 go to work, to earn the money, to buy a house you can't afford and a car so you could sit in a traffic jam to get to that work. There were people out there pioneering new ways and new ideas.

A lot of the ideas such as alternative energy, environmentalism, Gaia Hypothesis, and personal computers are commonplace now.

Personally my bookshelves are full of authors (and ideas) I might never have come across without the Whole Earth.

This book is a readable account of the Whole Earth community and its impact on American/Global society.

I can't believe nobody has reviewed it.

I also recommend:

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

and of course:

The Last "Whole Earth" Catalogue

This study by Andrew Kirk shows how the issues surrounding American environmentalism have changed from an either/or conflict of pristine wilderness vs. nearly out-of-control development just after World War II, to our present post-Whole Earth Catalog/Internet-powered regime whereby we can negotiate the peculiarities of our immediate environment and understanding of such with our much easier access to ideas and appropriate technology. Each individual human being, along with his or her tools, can now, for good or ill, dare be seen as part of the natural environmental process itself.

Counterculture Green is well written and will be especially informative for those such as myself who have not kept in close touch with the details of the environmental movement overall, nor with the Whole Earth phenomenon over the years, and who now feel compelled to learn more about the ideas and activities that have shaped our world during and after the catalytic decade of the 1960s.

The books, From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner, and Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand, are excellent additional resources related to Counterculture Green.

I read this book for a grad class about the 1960s. Judging from the title, I assumed the book would be about the environmental movement in the era. However, American environmentalism is featured only peripherally. Mostly this book is about The Whole Earth Catalog- its development and developers. Even more so, this book is a biography of the few who came up with the concept for the catalog and their struggles and ideas as it became successful. I was hoping for a book about the "back to nature" movement, even something about communes would have been fine. After reading this book, one realizes that the very system of capitalism that ideology of early environmentalism condemned ended up making the movement, and some it its founders, very successful and very wealthy.