Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (CultureAmerica) (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: free minds, tool freaks, liferaft earth, Whole Earth, Counterculture Green, Stewart Brand (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Vividly written and deeply researched, Counterculture Green tells a big story about how a group of technophile hippies invented human-scale ecological living and helped to change the world." David Farber, author of The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s "This is the story of America's other environmental movement, one that promoted safe and small technologies, that celebrated human ingenuity as well as the human species, that fostered passionate thinking - and acting - outside the box.... Timely, informative, entertaining, and critically important." Marcus Hall, author of Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration "A major work of environmental and cultural history." Ari Kelman, author of A River and Its City"

Product Description

For those who eagerly awaited its periodic appearance, it was more than a publication: it was a way of life. The Whole Earth Catalog billed itself as "Access to Tools," and it grew from a Bay Area blip to a national phenomenon catering to hippies, do-it-yourselfers, and anyone interested in self-sufficiency independent of mainstream America.

In recovering the history of the Catalog's unique brand of environmentalism, Andrew Kirk recounts how San Francisco's Stewart Brand and his counterculture cohorts in the Point Foundation promoted a philosophy of pragmatic environmentalism that celebrated technological achievement, human ingenuity, and sustainable living. By piecing together the social, cultural, material, environmental, and technological history of that philosophy's incarnation in the Catalog, Kirk reveals the driving forces behind it, tells the story of the appropriate technology movement it espoused, and assesses its fate.

This book takes a fresh look at the many individuals and organizations who worked in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to construct this philosophy of pragmatic environmentalism. At a time when many of these ideas were seen as heretical to a predominantly wilderness-based movement, Whole Earth became a critical forum for environmental alternatives and a model for how complicated ecological ideas could be presented in a hopeful and even humorous way. It also enabled later environmental advocates like Al Gore to explain our current "inconvenient truth," and the actions of Brand's Point Foundation demonstrated that the epistemology of Whole Earth could be put into action in meaningful ways that might foster an environmental optimism distinctly different from the jeremiads that became the stock in trade of American environmentalism.

Kirk shows us that Whole Earth was more than a mere counterculture fad. In an era of political protest, it suggested that staying home and modifying your toilet or installing a solar collector could make a more significant contribution than taking to the streets to shout down establishment misdeeds. Given its visible legacy in the current views of Al Gore and others, the subtle environmental heresies of Whole Earth continue to resonate today, which makes Kirk's lucid and lively tale an extremely timely one as well.

This book is part of the CultureAmerica series.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 303 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas; First Edition edition (October 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700615458
• ISBN-13: 978-0700615452
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #193,695 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was a punk before you were a punk but I still like the hippies!, May 11, 2008

By	Felix Dzerzhinsky "Felix Dzerzhinsky" (Phnom Penh, Cambodia) - See all my reviews

Living in London in the early eighties I used to frequent a sort of leftie/anarchist bookshop near Campden Lock. There I discovered the world of the Whole Earth Review and The Whole Earth Catalogues. Just as well I did too or I would have ended only reading Soldier of Fortune and military books like the rest of my "squaddie" mates. I was in the Army at the time.

What really captivated me about the Whole Earth was the idea that there was an alternative to 9 to 5 go to work, to earn the money, to buy a house you can't afford and a car so you could sit in a traffic jam to get to that work. There were people out there pioneering new ways and new ideas.

A lot of the ideas such as alternative energy, environmentalism, Gaia Hypothesis, and personal computers are commonplace now.

Personally my bookshelves are full of authors (and ideas) I might never have come across without the Whole Earth.

This book is a readable account of the Whole Earth community and its impact on American/Global society.

I can't believe nobody has reviewed it.

I also recommend:

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

and of course:

The Last "Whole Earth" Catalogue