Customer Reviews

Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

After reading some of the reviews (professional and otherwise), it's clear that there are some misconceptions about this book. As one of the people interviewed in this book (we are chapter 9), I can say that I'm very happy with what was written there.

What this book isn't, it isn't a "how to" for living off grid, it is not about the technical side of living off the grid, if this is what you are looking for in this book, you will probably be disappointed. There are lots of books on the technical side that will teach you how to live off grid, that's not what you will find between the pages of this book.

What this book is, it's about the people, the different reasons why people are choosing to go off grid, this is the human side of the story. From those who are doing it out of necessity to those choosing to live off grid, from those who are living in relative luxury with all the bells and whistles to those who are doing everything themselves with very little, you will learn about the who and the why of those living off grid.

Yes, Nick does insert his opinions into the book and that's fine, he does have a straightforward writing style, is that a bad thing? I don't think so, when Nick was interviewing us, he dug and dug hard, he didn't accept the first thing we said, he wanted to know more, he is a journalist after all and is used to digging for more information. Some might find his writing style too forward, I found it honest, some might wish the book was more soft soap, if that's what you are looking for, then you probably need to look for another book. If you are looking for an honest, upfront read on the who and the why of people living off the grid, then I would recommend this book for you.

Oh, and we aren't all antisocial, hippie, potheads trying to get around the law by living outside of society, no offense meant toward those folks. :) Many of us are looking for freedom, political as well as personally and financially, most of us just want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit, not hurting anyone, being independent. Get the book to learn more about the different reasons why more and more people are choosing to leave the mainstream lifestyle with all the consumerism, malls, 2 income households, living on credit cards, paycheck to paycheck, and choosing to live independently with much more freedom, and happiness.

Nick Rosen presents a tour through America, from coast to coast and through the heartland, visiting with various forms of off-grid livers in this country. From wealthy individuals to those of less fortunate circumstances, Nick takes the reader on a grand tour of an America that most Americans probably don't even know exists.

Nick is a very straight-forward writer, and pulls no punches about expressing his opinions regarding the situations of the people he is interviewing. Being one of the individuals chronicled in the book, I of course went straight to the section about myself as soon as I got an advance publisher's copy of the book. While at first I was a bit taken aback by some of Nick's comments, his assessment of my situation and his insight into what he thought I was thinking during our interview was actually right on, and I'm willing to bet the same is true of others that were profiled.

Probably the best part of the book is that it explores the vast number of DIFFERENT approaches to living off the grid. My approach is vastly different from the approach of others, because my approach requires heavy reliance on other types of infrastructure besides electric and water grids, but requires no land. Other approaches require either land or other resources. The book explores numerous different approaches to living off grid.

I think that the reader who is interested in this subject will take away more questions from the book rather than answers. However, that's part of being an educated reader: Finding things one wishes to explore more about. Hopefully, this book will inspire a new wave of Americans to explore off-grid living, and do so in a variety of different ways, which as a whole will move us further away from the reliance on the grid.

I picked this book up while browsing a new release section of a bookstore, and I have to say I'm thoroughly underwhelmed. I almost put it back and I wish I had for these three reasons:

1) The research put into writing this is abysmal. The chapters are rife with admissions of how he couldn't get interviews with people he wanted and many of the stories he does tell are based on email conversations. The people he actually meets sound like very interesting subjects, but it became painfully clear that he never spent any significant period of time to flush out more than you could learn over a cup of coffee.

2) Bias. Obviously if you buy this book you're expecting the author to talk about the advantages of alternative living, and he does a good job admitting his opinions on issues up front. I appreciated that part in the first chapters. But it kept coming. It was distracting to hear his voice in every part of the book, offering the story as his personal experiences rather than the stories of the people he was interviewing.

3) There wasn't any information about *how* people lived off the grid. Each chapter talks about different people living off the grid for different reasons, which is a great way to organize the book, but there isn't any discussion about the specifics of living off the grid. I learned that pot growers use solar panels and maybe they were responsible for making them popular in the mainstream. I was hoping to learn some specific information about the day to day challenges and advantages of the people, but it wasn't there. The only time this book is informational is talking about the politics of living off grid - but that wasn't what it advertises! It supposed to delve inside the movement and it doesn't.

I'm certain there has to be better books on the topic, so don't pick this one.

This book is:
-told in the first person as the author travels around America to meet people who are living off-grid lifestyles
-a peek into the psychology and sociology around living off the grid
-a brief background about how the grid developed and the impacts it has on our lives
-a useful sketch of the various archetypes of the people who leave the grid

This book is not:
-a manual for going off the grid
-an impersonal journalistic tome

Good:
-it brings out subject material that arguably has no other good way of getting to the public (since its subjects live off the grid...)
-well-written and insightful

Bad:
-sometimes personal insights which are interesting to the author may not be interesting to some Americans

Recently, I read Nick Rosen's "off the grid" with the long subtitle of: "Inside The Movement For More Space, Less Government And True Independence In Modern America". My family and I live "off the grid". We live in an "off grid", backwoods community far off the beaten path.

The book is readable; mostly it is a travelogue of Rosen's journey across America---visiting "off grid" people. Rosen also was looking for a place to settle down himself. A place to live "off the grid".

In many ways, the book isn't very satisfying. Some of the folks he writes about don't live off the grid. Some of the characters are downright weird. Many "off griders" didn't allow him to write about them (seems to be an inherent paranoia amongst off griders).

Rosen states 500,000 Americans live off the grid for various reasons. Rosen attributes much "off grid" living to the marijuana industry. The growing and cultivating of cannabis in remote locations led to the movement (in his eyes). And Rosen is quick to share a joint with those he visits.

But how does his experience compare to my own? Frankly, he is pretty right on. In my "off grid" rural neighborhood we have the pot growers, religious zealots and Rush Limbaugh lovers. People do want to be left alone and government is something to be hated, despised, feared. This ridge is no community of Eco-Socialists. No.

From my experience, Rosen's visits with the pot growers, religious fanatics, rednecks and Birther/Truther Paranoids is right on. Something I didn't expect when we bought this "off grid" cabin in the woods.

As many others have said, if you are looking for a "how-to" book, save your money. The stories of the various individuals he met and interviewed is interesting, but written in a mediocre style. The fact that there are no pictures or even drawings compels you to stretch your imagination when he describes homes or locales.

His background knowledge of the US was disappointing for someone who purports to have lived here for "some time."

The research was most disappointing. Despite the time he spent with the Mennonites he never understood that their language is a variant of German, not Dutch. A rudimentary scan by Google would have made clear to him that the term "Pennsylvania Dutch" is a corruption of "Deutsch". That is just one example of the errors. He accepts the cliche's about rural people in Kentucky or Texas, assuming all are racist. It is sad to see so many good people smeared. But then, many Europeans never grow beyond their basic assumptions about rural and Southern Americans.

In summary, if you are looking for top-drawer research or a guide to living off grid, keep looking.

Nick Rosen's book, Off the Grid:Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America is written for anyone interested in the off-the-grid lifestyle. Having lived that way myself for over eleven years now, I find it interesting that it is considered a "movement" now. Kind of like the "hippie movement" in the sixties.

This book is not about how to set up an alternative energy system or a detailing the systems of the people he interviewed for this book. It is about the people themselves. What drove them to go off-the-grid? Where do they live? Who are their neighbors? And what do they think of them living off-the-grid? What part of the country do they live in? It gave me the knowledge that there are other people all over America who are living the way I am. Most of the people in my area of the country who actually live off-the-grid, buy big systems that actually power a normal house with all the toys. Our system was small and affordable. Doing it little by little means it would never power that many things at once. It seems that the people Nick Rosen interviews in his book are more like us in that respect.

A part of the book I found extremely interesting was the history of our power grid as we know it. My husband is pretty knowledgeable on those facts but I had not really done much reading on it myself. I learned about how Thomas Edision started his company and some other historical facts. So you will learn some history in the process of reading this book.

I would recommend Off the Grid: Inside The Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America to anyone interested in living off-the-grid. It would give them an idea of what they are getting themselves into. Not that it is bad, just different. It would show them that there are many other people living this way or just wanting to. I know this as I get emails constantly from the readers of my blog, Solar Baby asking how to get started.

Nick Rosen writes in an easy reading style and I found it an enjoyable book. I found it interesting and did not put it down until I had read the whole book. I hope he does move to America and go off-the-grid himself, and write some more books about our off-the-grid movement.

The back cover of Nick Rosen's "Off the Grid" says the book is "essential reading for anyone who's ever thought about going off the grid." It's not.

Instead, it's a hodgepodge of anecdotes loosely hung together around the theme of utility-less living. I doubt that anybody in "Off the Grid" would have read, or benefited from, this book before they unplugged. What fails to come across in this featherweight book is the seriousness of the times and of the people whose response to today's USA is, in part, to move off-grid.

This is supposed to be a layman's guide based on the author's conversations with various off-gridders met while he toured the US. Rosen seems a pleasant enough fellow, and the book reads like the collected scraps of a paid vacation, which it surely was. It skips around a lot, as the subjects - I'd hesitate to call them interviewees - are all over the place geographically, and they pop up seemingly at random. In the end, I wondered more how Rosen arranged, and afforded, all that travel, than I did about how or why folks live as they do.

Trouble is, people living off the grid, or contemplating it, already have the resources, and the support networks they need; they're only a Google away. In these golden days of the information era, the survivalists have survivalist sites; the homeschoolers and the religious have places to congregate; pot-growers don't Bogart their intel; enviros have Real Goods; and even the nomadic car dwellers have groups, such as the enormously busy Van Dwellers Yahoo Group, for advice and support. I'll give out a shout here to "Hobo Stripper," who successfully parlayed a web site written from her van while making her living as an itinerant sex worker, into an off-grid Alaskan retreat she now owns and calls home.

Off-gridders owe more to Stewart Brand, still living on his tugboat, and The Whole Earth Catalog, than they do to any other single source. Yet they don't rate a mention in Off the Grid. Now there was a book that deserved the paper it was [ecologically] printed on. The Catalog, "Access to Tools," sparked the off-grid, back to the land movement 40 years ago. Those myriad sparks of knowledge - including the Internet - still glow all around us, informing us and lighting our way.

Rosen does nothing to add to the conversation(s) the Catalog started, either by compiling source information or digging out obscure but useful sites. There are no notes, no bibliography, no index.

He clearly hasn't done his homework when it comes to the political side of off-grid living, either. Perhaps it's his British perspective, but on this side of the Atlantic, it's easy to understand how intelligent, well-read, conscientious individuals are - at best - deeply distrustful of their government. I'm certainly no expert in any of the many government lies, conspiracies, and cover-ups of the past 60 years - my lifetime - nor do I want or need to be. But I've seen enough to understand that our government is essentially malign in many important aspects.

For example, it's bizarre that Rosen only "vaguely remembered" a conversation with Larry Silverstein, owner of the World Trade Center, and recipient of something like $750 million in insurance money, about the rationale behind the pre-arranged, controlled demolition of Building 7 on 9/11 (p.268). And because this is not just some historical footnote to many people, including his subject of the moment, Allan Weisbecker, Rosen dismisses him - and them - as paranoid kooks in his chapter entitled "Fear."

As for Peak Oil, Rosen betrays a lack of understanding that disserves both his subjects and the reading public. He makes an error of fact by mis-defining Peak Oil as "the point in history at which the amount of oil consumed each year exceeds the amount of new oil found each year" (p.273). Consumption has outpaced discovery for many years. Peak Oil is when worldwide oil production reaches its highest possible point, ever and for all time. It's a basic, but critical distinction. According to the International Energy Agency, that point occurred in 2006, in line with what many others have predicted.

It's important for this book because Peak Oil means that the whole 150-year era of petro-industrial growth - of which the grid is a big part - is over. The grid is almost certainly on its way out, whether through irreparable infrastructure deterioration, terrorism, copper- and aluminum "mining" vandalism, fuel shortages, financial shenanigans, or some mix of the above.

Rosen addresses none of this and condescends toward those of his subjects who take politics and energy seriously. It's not just that there's bad scholarship here, though there's that, it's that there's no indication of any critical thinking or reading.

There's no help here for people who are already off-grid and want to get better at it. Nor is there enough intellectual meat to help concerned readers make informed decisions about their place on- or off-grid.

If you must read "Off the Grid," at least take it out of the library, as I did. And spend your hard-earned cash elsewhere - like on your utility bill.

The subtitle 'Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America' is what the book is ALL about, NOT how to build off the grid.
The value of this wonderful book is its educational format that asks a lot of questions of who, why and where are the off grid folks and would this work for me. Often times someone will get the idea that they should take a new path in life, but then they fail to do their homework and ask the serious questions before taking off. So often I have heard and even read pieces where people have a stereotypical view of who is off the grid. Often times its one of two types. Back to earther types or the elite who want something ultra modern for their Big Mac mansions. This book is refreshing because it covers folks in diverse climates, population areas, educational, financial genre. From the multi millionaire/billionaire in California to some desert rat in the southwest, to someone in Oregon, to North Carolina.

This is helpful because so many people I encounter assume you have to live in a 365 sunny days location. Here in the Sierras where we can get snow packs up to the roof line, as long as its sunny, and the panels are clear, you have power. The book is also refreshing because its not all roses and champagne. Some of the folks really are roughing it, often because of losing jobs, or homes or lifestyle choices which have resulted in a new start, in a 200 sq ft or less cabin with solar panels for a light and a computer. This is a book that folks interested in the vast variety of off the grid styles there are. How many people even know that a healthy stream on private land can generate power, whereas a wind power generator could work better for someone with more windy days than sunny ones?

Because this excellent book opens your eyes to the vast choices for going off grid, I highly recommend it.


It's about why people from all walks of life who feel that they need to be more self sufficient, including providing ones own water, phone, power. In large part because of natural disasters like Katrina, which left tens of thousands of people in horrid conditions, because folks and local officials assumed the government would save them.

The authored pick some 30 different families to talk to and they come from all walks of life. Some are Libertarian minded and want little government in their life, some have lost jobs and been forced to downsize and find ways to save costs. You have part time folks who are off the grid as far as a vacation homes, but they aren't the majority.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was not at all what I was expecting, but with an open mind you can glean a lot from its pages. This book is not a "how-to" live off the grid, if it was that, then it makes me want to stay on-the-grid. But maybe that's the idea, for now. It almost reads like a Homesteader's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" with various snippets and character sketches of the bizzare, a conspiracy theorist's nightmare in the heartland and fringes of America. Is this really the story of the typical off-gridder ? Maybe this is what happens when people who want to live alone realize that they need to live in a community. Contradictions abound. Do we all run away and produce our own power stations ? What about sharing ?

This book made me want to crunch some numbers. Could I do it ? What would I need to really live off the grid where I am? I certainly don't want to find some land in the dessert and struggle with a composting toilet, but maybe it is time we figure out how to improve the systems we need to efficiently reduce our footprint. Why is it that it costs $3,000 to buy solar panels to produce 350 watts of power ? (a few light bulbs and a computer) If we are destroying this planet you would think that someone somewhere could invent a better Solar Power system.
The stories and snippets of these people struggling to survive is frightening. I could never imagine living like this with a small family. What is driving them to such extremes. Are they all running away from something ? Is this really what the Off-grid community is all about ?
I think Nick will need to write a follow up to some of these stories. It left me with more questions than answers.

Why are so many people unplugging and simply walking away from the daily grind. Is it the economy ? Yes. And High unemployment means that those remaining workers are working harder than ever. And most importantly people are getting tired of working to pay for all the stuff they need to live. Is there a better way. There has to be. In my mind we need to first reduce our consumption. Maybe there is a place between Off-Grid and On-Grid. That's what I'm looking for.