Customer Reviews

Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front

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The secondary title of this book--One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family while Coming to Terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times--pretty much tells the story.

This is not just another of those doom-and-gloom, batten-down-the-hatches-and-man-the-lifeboat handbooks we have seen so many of in the past few years. I've read most of those other books, and while they are helpful in understanding why we are where we are (in terms of energy depletion, climate change, and overwhelming personal and national debt), they don't go very far toward helping us deal with the problems we are facing.

Depletion and Abundance is different. For one thing, it is written by a woman--a smart, well-informed, and energetic woman. She is also a mother of four small children who manages to grow a garden, put food in the freezer, home school the kids, and write about it. These are not small matters, for all of the other books that have been written about energy, environmental, and economic woes have been written by men, bless 'em. These writers understand conceptually what we are facing and tell us with great authority and occasional sympathy just how bad it's likely to be. But Sharon Astyk is different. She speaks with authority and sympathy, but she focuses on how we can manage when tough times come. She writes with cheerfulness, humor, and great personal commitment. I'm betting that, if anybody can show us the way forward, she can.

For another thing, Depletion and Abundance is a book about the "new home front"--and if you ask me, this is where our real battles will be fought: not in Washington or in some foreign country, and not with guns (we hope). We will be trying to make our lives better at home. We will be working with a toolkit that women will need to know how to acquire and use: food from the garden, low-energy appliances, and care and attention to the wise conservation and deployment of the family's resources of time, effort, and money, in and out of the "official economy." Peak oil and gas, the use of coal and nuclear and renewable resources--these are public issues and must of course be addressed by national and local governments. But as Astyk points out repeatedly, it all comes home in the end. Home is where we will find sufficiency or scarcity, and it is women who will man the home front. This is a new message, an important message. We need to listen up.

Depletion and Abundance is full of important and helpful ideas. Astyk suggests ways we can reduce our consumption, get out of debt, and learn how to use what we have--use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without: the real homeland security, as she sees it. She has learned to live on seasonal produce and local foods. She and her family have faced the frightening fact that our futures may not be fully or continuously electrified (as I write this, Hurricane Ike has imposed this knowledge on some four million reluctant learners). Astyk has learned how to cope and she tells us how. Indeed, she is never stingy with her ideas. There's a 14-page appendix full of good suggestions for turning less into more, and more, and more.

And that, at least for me, is what is most important about this book. Yes, we're facing an unpredictable future where there will be less of everything. But the human spirit, as Astyk shows us, is capable of a marvelous alchemy. We can turn tough times into a test, and pass it. We can become self-sufficient, and in the process, learn how to recognize true abundance when we see it. Hers is an optimistic vision, to be sure--overly optimistic, in some ways. But we need optimism now, don't we? And if we need it now, we'll need it even more next week or next year or the years after that, in what may be a future most of us don't want to think about.

Read Depletion and Abundance and see if it doesn't change your ideas about what's ahead. It just might change your life, too.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front is a much-needed and very well written book. Sharon Astyk's voice and humor shine through her writing; I felt more like I was listening to her tell me a story, rather than reading a book. While other books that come about due to Climate Change and Peak Oil border on argumentative, Ms. Astyk sticks to the facts, what you and I can do about it, and her occasional (well prefaced) opinion.

After reading several books regarding the "state of things" (peak oil and climate change), Ms. Astyk's book was a welcome relief - no hysterics, scare tactics, or chapters upon chapters of statistics - just one, well educated mother/wife, telling the rest of us her take on what we can do to prepare for the future.

My favorite part of this book was Ms. Astyk's discussion of formal and informal economy, and how we can use both forms of economy to successfully transition from living globally to living locally. I also am thankful for her copious references and resources, as well as her list of "little" things that we can do to make a "big" difference (at the end of the book).

If you're not going to buy this book now, at least put it on your wish list, and check out Sharon Astyk's website.

Carbon Detox (Gaia Thinking)


Depletion and Abundance is helping me to take postive action through a sense of panic primarily, for me, related to how fast the climate is changing. She's reminding me of what really matters in family life, and community life. This is a Be Prepared manual that doesn't place individuals outside of their communities. Astyk is incredibly intelligent and funny as well. There's lots of fascinating social history and well as personal reportage. This book is going to be a classic. I love it. I only wish I had time to sit down and read it without interruption....

I bought this book for ideas on how to address our families future on a planet running low on natural resources. We garden and preserve and raise chickens and sew and drive an old clunker that gets very good gas mileage. We are the weirdos on the block who grow tomatoes in their front yard. We understand the peril of non-action and feel the need to gain as much knowledge as possible so that we are as prepared as possible for whatever scenario we are faced with. But we don't need to be frightened into doing our part toward that end. I found myself skipping whole chapters that seemed entirely devoted to scaring me into action. There were times I literally wanted to scream "I get it!"

Though there are wonderful sections in the book about family and community and the positives that can come out of being forced to change our global lifestyles, the overwhelming feeling is one of foreboding and doom.

ps. Re-reading this review I felt that I needed to add a disclaimer. Though I don't like to read the 'worst possible case' scenarios because I tend to be a bit of a worrier (ok, I can make myself sick with worry) maybe most people NEED to be frightened into changing their behavior since that may be the only way they WILL change. I've discovered over the last few months in discussing some of the issues Sharon brings up in her book that doing something out of purely altruistic motives is truly unique. Most people have to be pushed to make even small adjustments in their lifestyles. I will be recommending this book to that crowd.

I love this book! Rather than making one feel helpless and panicked because our fast-paced, credit-based lifestyle is becoming outmoded even as I write this, she inspires a can-do attitude. She includes both philosophical and practical information, and the book has a terrific bibliography. She encourages you to take action, even if you can only do it in small ways, so you don't feel overwhelmed. It is a totally useful book - I guess she understands that if you are taking the time to read it, you probably want and need solid information. I highly recommend this book and also recommend her blog which likewise contains interesting and useful ideas. Can't wait for her next book to hit the shelves!!

If you're considering living a more sustainable lifestyle, but you're living on a 1/4 acre city lot and commuting 6 hours a week like I do, Ms. Astyk helps you begin to adjust to the low-energy idea no matter what your starting point. My career path has been very similar to hers, too, so it gives me hope. I have gotten so many ideas to make my home economy better, I'm antsy to get going, even in the dead of winter - garden in the backyard, woodstove, root cellar, bicycle washing machine, growing mushroom crops for the neighbors/market, making my own bread, and my own yogurt and buttermilk with local milk, grinding grain, dehydrating, canning. I feel like her chapter on population and consumption probably had the most impact on me, because I really believe in a family's ability to choose how many children to have, anywhere in the world - and she points to the root cause of explosive population growth as the market economy pushing for our wasteful consumption. She also did a really great job recognizing that your politics involved in living this lifestyle may matter during this time that we actually have a choices, but that when we're forced to live more modestly in the near future, our politics will put us all in the same boat. I really appreciate that because I get so hurt when one party or the other claims to be the only one to understand some of the basic philosophies and concerns that define our country's identity.

This is a wonderful, practical, inspiring book that details what Sharon Astyk is doing to confront issues of peak oil and sustainability. She has many good ideas about what individuals and communities can do to get on with the urgent task of massively reducing our consumption and carbon emissions. Importantly, Sharon points out that many of the things that we need to do for the sake of the planet's future have the consequence of making our lives more enjoyable and meaningful.

There is one difficulty with some of Sharon's ideas - a number of the ideas can only be implemented by people who have stability of location. For people who are renting and/or having to move house regularly for whatever reason, this book might not be so helpful.

This book by Sharon Astyk explains one person's decision to change their own lifestyle because of threats to the environment. Most people talk about having to make changes but Sharon has decided to actually make those changes. It is a great model of leadership and very hopeful in the midst of grim news about the world.

This is a very important book for today. I wish everyone would read it! I think she is "right on" with everything even if things don't get as extreme as she and others suggest they probably will. This books encourages us to live just as we should regardless of peak oil and other major changes.

READ THIS BOOK!

For a down-to-earth and bracing perspective on the current times and where we are going, Sharon Astyk's book is invaluable. We need people to talk us down from our various precipices as we face the need to negotiate ourselves down to a more present reality. I particularly liked the chapter on the "real" economy vs. the "formal" economy.