Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World [Hardcover]

Charles HRH The Prince Of Wales (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 2, 2010

For the first time, His Royal Highness Charles, the Prince of Wales, shares his views on how mankind’s most pressing modern challenges are rooted in our disharmony with nature. In the vein of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Van Jones’ Green Collar Economy, Prince Charles presents the compelling case that solutions to our most dire crises—from climate change to poverty—lie in regaining a balance with the world around us.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

For the first time, HRH The Prince of Wales shares his views on how our most pressing modern challenges—from climate change to poverty—are rooted in mankind's disharmony with nature, presenting a compelling case that the solution lies in our ability to regain a balance with the world around us

With its holistic approach, this provocative and well-reasoned book takes the discussion of sustainability and climate change in a new direction. Prince Charles shows how the solutions to problems like climate change lie not only in technology but in our ability to change the way we view the modern world.

For decades, the Prince of Wales has been studying a wide array of disciplines to understand every aspect of man's impact on the natural world, and in that time he has examined everything from architecture to organic farming to sustainable economics. Now, for the first time, he speaks out about his years of research, presenting a fascinating look at how modern industrialization has led us to a state of disharmony with nature, created climate change, and pushed us to the brink of disaster.

From the rice farms of India to the prairies of America's corn belt, from the temples of Ancient Egypt to the laboratories of industrial designers, Harmony spans the globe to identify the different ways that contemporary life has abandoned the hard-earned practices of our history, a shift that has spurred a host of social problems and accelerated climate change.

Drawing on cases from farming, healthcare, transportation, and design, the Prince of Wales also offers solutions for change, creating a new vision for our world, one that incorporates the traditional wisdom of our past with the modern science of our present to avert catastrophe. In the end, Harmony paints a holistic portrait of what we as a species have lost in the modern age, while outlining the steps we can take to regain the harmony of our ancestors.

Illustrated with lush, four-color photographs and charts, this intelligent, practical, and well-reasoned guide is an indispensable weapon in the battle to save our planet.

About the Author

The Prince of Wales has used his unique position to make a difference throughout the world, establishing numerous charities and public interests, and organizing The Prince's Rainforests Project to combat deforestation and global warming.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper (November 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061731315
• ISBN-13: 978-0061731310
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #545,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant thinker and visionary November 12, 2010

By Wendy Victor

Format:Hardcover

The author, often maligned and trivialized by the press, shows himself here to be a serious thinker, writer, historian and visionary. I believe he is the best product of the British monarchy to emerge in the past two hundred years.

His book clearly analyzes the root causes of our separation from a state of harmony, and predicts the consequences of this estrangement from the natural world. Widely read himself, he interjects his personal thoughts and opinions into the narrative, thereby creating an informal approach to what could have been a dry text.

I love this book. lt inspires me to do the right thing, to pay attention not only to our built environment but also to keep trying to connect my spirit to my actions.

50 of 58 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Perspectives and Pertinent Thoughts November 2, 2010

By J.C.

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Utterly engrossed from the first page to the last. Did not want to put it down.

Prince Charles is BRILLIANT about nature and the environment and yes, how people act in relationship to that. OH MY. Am so glad that he has written this and it will be available for so many people to discover and enjoy and benefit from.
Finally someone who thinks like me but says it far more eloquently:)

I wish everyone thought like him, we would have such a better world, not just physically, but in terms of understanding and perception and cooperation with Earth. He really sees the connections that are so important to not only surviving but thriving for our ecology and world, in many aspects, from animals to plants to architecture to spirituality.

I can almost forgive him for Camilla reading this book. And if she understood him -- and Diana didn't, for the first time I can see why he wanted to be with Canilla because of her personality, and how she made him feel so good.

His viewpoint is far advanced beyond accepted science and industry's ineffective ways.

Wow.

He is really, really, really wise. I hope this book makes people think, and even more than that, encourages them to adopt some of the ideas he suggest with such good sense behind them.
If Prince William follows in his father's footsteps with this, it would be wonderful as well.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Insight November 19, 2010

By Kathleen Grone

Format:Hardcover

I am extremely impressed with this book and have a whole new respect for Prince Charles. The man is brilliant and he cares. I think this is a must read for all and would love to see it in the classroom. I completely agree that most of our problems are because we do not live in Harmony with nature. Our world was created by a God who has all the answers, who has given us all the answers within nature, if we would only listen.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars He speaks the unfashionable truth January 17, 2011

By R. Steuteville

Format:Hardcover

This review was published on newurbannetwork.com

Urbanists have long admired Prince Charles as the developer of new urban Poundbury, a town extension of Dorchester, England. He has also earned respect for his bold and blunt critiques of modernist architecture -- including the notorious 1984 comparison of a proposed addition to the British Museum to "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend."

But Charles's architecture and land development exploits are but an offshoot of his worldview -- explained at length in his new book, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World. The book, which deals extensively with the built environment as well as deeper, related concepts, is of interest to urbanists.

Harmony reveals the Prince of Wales as something of a sustainability renaissance man. It also underscores Charles's credibility -- not as a member of the royal family, that only accounts for fame; but because he has accomplished so much in realms well beyond what's expected of an heir to the throne. With no decrease in income or yields for farmers, Charles says, the world's agriculture could be converted to more organic, sustainable methods while absorbing 40 percent of carbon emissions. If it came from an environmentalist who has little personal experience with agriculture, such a claim might be dismissed by readers.

But Charles is an early, successful, adopter of organic farming methods. He saw to the transformation of his 1,000-acre Duchy Home Farm from conventional to organic methods in the 1980s, when such a move was considered flaky. "The decision was controversial, and I have to say that back then not many people could see the sense of my plan. But times have changed a bit," Charles writes....

Harmony is a catalogue of environmental crises and sustainability solutions, and Charles spends a few paragraphs describing crop rotation methods and animal husbandry at his farm. But he doesn't spend too long covering any one thing in this wide-ranging book. In the built environment realm, Charles describes how "the system of segmenting cities and their suburbs, putting development in their own zones," has made us dependent on automobiles and oil. "So we set in place a long-term dependence upon something which is a finite resource; one that, in the near future, is expected by many experts to be in shorter supply," he writes, adding, "Zonal development risks loss of social cohesion."

These are not novel thoughts among new urbanists, but the source is unique. Charles may be the only world leader who has personally built a commercially successful, mixed-use, walkable neighborhood. As the book reveals, Charles was advised that Poundbury would be financially disastrous -- it now has 1,800 residents and is proceeding apace. "Poundbury has proven to be commercially very successful," says Charles.

Prior to launching this project, Charles made a bold move: he hired Leon Krier as the urban designer. You won't find Krier mentioned in Harmony -- that doesn't seem unfair; the book covers enough ground to justify omitting such details. Yet no ordinary developer would have hired Krier, an architectural theorist who had no experience planning a real place. The move turned out to be brilliant. Poundbury has no zoning -- but the real charm of the development is that the streets and public spaces use urban form rather than regulation to control traffic. It is a forerunner of the recently popular "shared space" street designs.

Squares and streets are designed to have a more timeless, traditional proportion, Charles explains. He describes "moments when a road suddenly turns into a square, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow. A rule closely observed is to make sure that there is always some sort of structural event at regular intervals. It could be a fountain, a tree or a bench, but the combination of this varying shape to the roadways and surprise events results in drivers naturally going slowly."

Poundbury is beautifully detailed -- kind of like Harmony. Charles hires good help. Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly are credited as coauthors, and no doubt they did a lot of the heavy lifting. But the book is a class act -- it feels good in your hands. The paper is very high quality. The photographs are stunning.

The tactile comfort is in contrast with the thrust of the book, which is radical. "This is a call to revolution," Charles says, in the first sentence. He is not talking about political revolution, but rather about overturning the path that Western civilization has taken since the 16th Century. Charles rails against an approach that he traces from the Scientific Revolution, developed further in the Industrial Revolution, and culminating in Modernism -- an approach that he calls "mechanistic." This way seeks understanding by breaking down things into their component parts, rather than seeing them in a "whole-istic" way. It focuses on specialized knowledge and what can be measured. An example is a near-religious belief in the growth of gross domestic product, or GDP, which has taken hold since such measuring was universally applied after World War II.

"I grew up in this era and have seen the vast changes that have occurred in society as a result of what has become our obsession with endless economic expansion," Charles says. GDP does not measure the quality of people's relationships, the pleasantness and security of their neighborhoods, how happy we are, or whether our lives are fulfilling, he explains. In order for people to contribute most to economic success, as measured by GDP, Charles says "they might drive everywhere in a huge, energy-wasting car and then buy a new one every year. They might also buy vast quantities of unnecessary consumer goods, waste much of their food rather than eat it, and, after retirement, die a lingering death preceded by years of dependence and expensive, life-extending drugs." The problem, Charles notes, is that growth in wealth as measured in resource consumption is considered a wholly positive thing.

Charles acknowledges that the mechanistic way has brought huge benefits. Ancient societies were "cruel and inhuman ... ravaged by plagues and diseases ... life expectancy was short." But the Age of Reason has also codified a plundering of nature, and the bill for centuries of that pursuit is now coming due, he says. "I feel it is now time to face the undeniable conclusion that we are currently on course for a massive and rapid ecological decline," says Charles, in a decidedly uncheery tone. He decries the "endless prevaricating by finding one skeptical excuse after another."

The answer, says the prince, is to combine our scientific sophistication with a reawakening to harmony, wisdom, and a close relationship with nature -- the kind that is found in traditional societies. Above all, he says, we must give up consumerism, which can never entirely be satisfied, in favor of community, which can. I don't know how much of an impact Charles's book will have. Many of the more mystical and spiritual parts of the book will be scoffed at or dismissed. As Charles writes, "It is a sad fact of history that humanity will never wake up to the dangers until the crisis actually hits us between the eyes. Until then, vest interests stave off the warnings by shooting the messenger or destroying the sanctuary that holds the wisdom of the heart."

Harmony deserves to be taken seriously. The book offers a valuable correction to the obsessive specialization and reductivism of modern science, by an author who is willing to endure ridicule time and time again to tell the unfashionable truth. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An environmental read, a read for all weary of industrialism February 9, 2011

By gentle rain

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I absolutely love this book. It is a must read for every environmentalist, activist and should be for every student.

It is about our environment and the tell tale signs of how damaged it is, why and how it got this way and what we can all do about it. He speaks of "modernism" and the human races' shunning of its bond to nature and how this is unnatural to us and how shunning nature affects us. He briefly covers many subjects, many people do not realize what aspects of our lives that the environment and nature affect. He talks about Nature and its relation to health, healing, communities, crime, behavioral health, food, architecture, religion, math, etc. (The first two chapters are not for the faint of heart, however just like getting over a bad habit, you to admit you have it in order to start recovery so don't lose heart!)

I like the middle chapters; the history (and culture) of how before medieval times we all "lived off the land", how we got here stiffed with our current attitudes and about the Catholic churches involvement.

I shun "modernity" myself, I have felt this way a long time and frankly, I think it was great of Prince Charles to put it in black and white for people that think and feel like I do (a huge impact on people, today-a must read!). He is a very intelligent man, very in tune to all things around him, eloquent and also some humor here and there. The environment and nature touches our lives in so many aspects(aside from the current and immediate dangers), he brings this all together in one very well thought out/laid out book.

A definite addition to my activist library. I bought one for myself and 6 (so far) for friends, family and associates. It's that good and the message is that important!... You will feel enlightened by the time you are at the end of the book. Enjoy! Read more ›