The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living [Paperback]

Scott Nearing (Author), Helen Nearing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 1990

This one volume edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings these classics on rural homesteading together. This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills."--Washington Post Book World

From the Inside Flap

This one volume edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings these classics on rural homesteading together. This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.

Product Details

• Paperback: 411 pages
• Publisher: Schocken Books (January 3, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805209700
• ISBN-13: 978-0805209709
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Essays
  • #45 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Zoology

More About the Author

Helen Nearing left city life with her husband, Scott, nearly sixty years ago to move first to Vermont and then to their farm in Harborside, Maine. The Nearings' food and living philosophies have provided the guidelines for many who seek a simpler way of life.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, January 16, 2004

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living (Paperback)

This book is a reprint of two classics "Living the good life" and "Continuing the good life". In these books, Scott and Helen Nearing describe how they chose to live deliberately, and built for themselves a sustainable life and lifestyle in Vermont and Maine. In "Living the good life", they explain some of the circumstances that led them to stage a strategic withdrawal from New York City and relocate to a run-down farm in Vermont during the 1930s. They describe how they acquired and developed their land, how they built their house, and their garden and diet. A major focus of the book is explaining their philosophy of non-exploitation, and how they wanted to implement their ideas of social justice into their lifestyle. The Nearings believed so strongly in avoiding exploitation of any kind that they avoided resorting to animal labor or products on their farm. They arranged their days so that they could spend 4 hours doing bread labor, 4 hours working with the community, and had 4 hours of free time each day to pursue independent interests. They also describe how they earned cash income from maple sugaring on their property. Towards the end of this first section, they explain that growing crowds of visitors, combined with a general lack of cooperation in the community eventually convinced them to abandon their project in Vermont and move on to Maine.

In "Continuing the Good Life," the Nearings describe how they built a second homestead in Maine. Once again, they explain how they constructed a house from stone, and how they developed a case income, this time based on blueberries. Gardening and diet is also given more space in this volume than it had in "Living the Good Life".

This book is rich with both inspiration and practical details. Scott Nearing was a well published academic in the field of economics before he started the adventures described in these volumes. As a result, his style of writing is rather academic, and his chapters contain quite a few footnotes. It's a little strange to read this book out of context, to dive right in without knowing anything about the Nearings beforehand. This is what I did the first time I read the book, and I found the premise of the adventure rather preposterous- -two city people going off to establish a commune in the mountains during the 1930s. They mentioned that they earned some money from traveling and writing. Without further explanation, I thought they were travel writers or something. It wasn't until I read John Saltmarsh's book The Making of a Homesteader that I began to get the full picture. In that book, Saltmarsh describes how Scott Nearing had been a very successful economics professor in the first decade of the century. However, he was a very outspoken pacifist, and lost his teaching positions because of his politics. He was living in New York City, separated from his wife, when he met Helen, his soul mate. Because of his political stances, Nearing was recruited by the Communist Party as an educator and politician. However, he was too much a freethinker for the communists, and was soon expelled from the party for continuing to voice his independent ideas. It was at this point, when he was about 50, when he and Helen began their Good Life experiment in Vermont. With this background in mind, Nearing's comments and opinions stated in this book make a lot more sense.

117 of 126 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyman's Bible for Living Simpler, High-Quality Lifestyles, April 15, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living (Paperback)

I first became aware of the Nearings (Helen and Scott) as a university student in the late 1960s, when they were considered the elder statesmen of the Sixties counterculture's back-to-the-land movement. As such, they prefigure by decades all the current flood of authors counseling a return to basic human values, lives of simplicity and a turning away from lifestyles of mindless consumption. The thread of truth running through their decades of rural adventures and struggles to live their lives with quality, public service, and dignity is an American classic, and one the present generation could learn much from. Simply put, this is a classic volume that describes the Nearings' lifetime experiment at establishing and maintaining a more meaningful alternative lifestyle, one eschewing the waste, rampant materialism, and corporate subjugation so common in today's mainstream society. After reading this book, one will chuckle quietly at the pathos inherant in the sight of all these busy, self-important yuppies driving proudly down the highway in their hard-won BMWs, doing their deals and talking on their cellular phones while driving in traffic, going nowhere fast with such innane but self-absorbed intensity. There is a much more meaningful and satisfying way to approach one's life, and it is described in detail in this book. Buy it and be prepared to be educated and amazed. It has profoundly changed my own life and the way I approach the future, and I recommend it to anyone who has even a mild degree of discomfort with the rampant greed and materialism characterizing contemporary American society. Cheers!

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly inspirational book!, August 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living (Paperback)

Since I was a little girl I've dreamt of living on a farm. Growing my own food. Gaining my daily exercise while I do my chores. Today I'm in my early 30's and still have a strong desire to live a life similar to Helen & Scott Nearing. This book was such an inspiration to me! "The Good Life" has made me yearn even more for a healthier, and fruitful lifestyle. I'm thankful that Helen & Scott were such generous people and willing to share their experiences and knoweldge. I only wish that I had the opportunity to meet these beautiful souls and share a few days labor, meal and conversation with them.