Customer Reviews

The Next Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools

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To review what was relevent to review, in the early 80's, is to go back twenty years in time to examine the past. This catalog of catalogs is extremely interesting to anyone who wants to remember two decades ago, or to anyone who wants to be mesmerised by the written materials that were available at the time. I found myself amazed, intrigued, revitalized, and thoroughly entertained for hours reading about the tools and ideas compiled therein. There is something to interest almost everyone in this big book that captures informational history at its best!

"The Next Whole Earth Catalog" was seminal in crystallizing a way of conceiving of alternative tools, and providing access to them when it was published in the early 1980s. It's also significant in emblematizing a way of thinking that emerged perhaps with Earth Day in 1968, and which has been an interesting cultural current underlying green architecture. In this book, Brand identified Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" (Oxford University Press, 1977) as the most significant work in the catalog. Both of these beautiful and conceptually far-reaching books can be delightful reads on a Sunday morning, and so much more. One of the things that Stewart Brand, who put "The Next Whole Earth Catalog" together, has gotten involved with recently is "The All Species Foundation," which attempts to identify and catalog how many species there are - an interesting project.

I purchased the book because I had the first version back in the 60s. The present book shows its age, i.e. the edges of the pages are yellowed and the binding is weak. But I expected that due to its age - printed in 1971. Turning the pages and reading the articles certainly bring back the memories.

The delivery was prompt and the books condition was as stated.

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