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Frank Levering

Wanda Urbanska

Simple Living: One Couple's Search for a Better Life Paperback – January 1, 2003

by Frank Levering (Author), Wanda Urbanska (Author)

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Originally published in 1992, long before "simple living" became a hot marketing trend, this groundbreaking work eloquently makes the case for a simpler, less stressful life. Told by Frank Levering and Wanda Urbanska, a literary couple who met as students at Harvard and moved from the fast lane in Los Angeles to take over a family orchard in southwestern Virginia, Simple Living is the story of their decision to put more meaning into their lives while eliminating unnecessary debt and superfluous consumption, as well as lessening their environmental footprint.

Levering and Urbanska have written what many have hailed as a classic in the field: a personal yet grittily realistic memoir about their quest for more meaningful values in a consumer-driven society. Theirs is an honest account of what it means to live not outside the system but within it while at the same time claiming one's own values. While simple living has many definitions, Levering and Urbanska identify its focus as environmental stewardship, thoughtful consumption, community activism, and financial responsibility. Drawing on case studies of others throughout the country who are choosing to simplify, Simple Living suggests ways that you can simplify your life, not by any 10-step plan but by taking measures that make sense for you.

As relevant today as when it was first published, Simple Living is reprinted here with a new preface by the authors and a foreword by Millard and Linda Fuller, founders of Habitat for Humanity International.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

John F Blair Pub
Publication date

January 1, 2003
Dimensions

5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0895872897
ISBN-13

978-0895872890
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Billy Romp
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Cecile Andrews
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Wanda Urbanska
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Frank Levering
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Wanda Urbanska
21
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Wanda Urbanska
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

National lecturers, workshop leaders, and authors or co-authors of seven books, Levering and Urbanska have appeared on Oprah, CBS This Morning, the Today show, and NPR's All Things Considered. They've been featured in USA Today, Redbook, Family Circle, and Glamour. They now own and operate Levering Orchard, the largest cherry orchard in the South, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ John F Blair Pub; 2nd edition (January 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0895872897
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0895872890
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,688,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11,929 in Environmentalism
- #17,356 in Nature Conservation
- #84,893 in Personal Transformation Self-Help

Customer Reviews:
3.5 20 ratings

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Frank Levering
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Wanda Urbanska
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Simple Living Expert, Author & Host of “Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska”
With keen insight and sensitivity, Wanda Urbanska has inspired thousands of overscheduled, debt-ridden and worn-out Americans to reshape their lives and “get back to basics” while building meaningful relationships, a healthier planet and secure, caring communities.
Urbanska’s approach encourages us to make small lifestyle changes that together, add up to create multiple, overlapping benefits and deliver big picture change. Through teaching about and leading a life of environmental stewardship, thoughtful consumption, community involvement and financial responsibility, she is educating the public to pursue happier and more sustainable lives.
Urbanska is the author of The Heart of Simple Living (2010) and the author or co-author of seven other books including Nothing’s Too Small To Make A Difference (2004) and Less is More (2009). She hosted the PBS primetime special “Escape from Affluenza: Living Better on Less.” Her series, “Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska,” is the first national television series on sustainable living. With four production seasons, it debuted on PBS stations in 2004.
Expert Source
A graduate of Harvard University, Urbanska has helped to identify simplicity as one of the top trends of our time. She is sought-after for her insights and has appeared on numerous television shows including "The Oprah Winfrey Show,” the “Today” show and “CBS This Morning.” She has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and in such magazines as Vogue, Natural Home, Mother Earth News and American Libraries. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the London Daily Telegraph and many others.
Recently, Urbanska returned from a seven-month sabbatical in Poland with her 12-year-old son Henry. She used the opportunity as an exercise in simplicity while exploring her roots. Her only possessions were those that she could fit into two suitcases. She lived with a Polish family, car-free, using public transportation to get around.
Urbanska lives and works in North Carolina. Join her online community at www.simplelivingtv.net.
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Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5

20 global ratings

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Orchard Lady

Very enjoyable reading!

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2013

Verified Purchase

Really enjoyed this book; it was all that it was advertised to be. Very enjoyable to follow them from Los Angeles to Virginia and watch their lives change as they got involved with the orchard.

Helpful

eileen Petrillo

Not so Simple reading

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2013

Verified Purchase

This was very disappointing and I can say this with confidence after ordering many, many books from Amazon. The cover was more interesting than the story.

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storypage

Simple living for yuppies.

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2005

If you want to read the experiences of a couple of yuppies "simplifying" their lives, I suppose this is the book for you. I guess there is a place for that. However, they apparently had so far to go that simplifying for them is anything but for some of the rest of us.

I found the writing style very irritating. Referring to themselves sometimes in the first person, other times second, over to third, then back to first, it really got on my last nerve.

Some of the stories were interesting, but only as stories, not as inspiration or information on simplifying. The best parts of the book were when they were talking about the simple living solutions of other people, almost all of whom had more interesting stories than the authors'.

The snide shot they took at the Nearings was completely uncalled for and unnecessary, as was the equally mean comments about the couple who were former nuns, although not for the reason you may think but because they had simplified too much, in the eyses of the authors. I think this is revealing, and underscores my impression that they only think people should simplify so far.

And the fact that they see Sam Levering as being only of modest income even during the heyday of his orchard indicates they really have no clue about economic reality for most Americans.

Lastly, to have a chapter on frgual living only to turn around in the next chapter and describe a completely unnecessary upgrade of a kitchen was the last straw. Do they even know what frugal IS???

I second some of the other recommendations for alternative books. Read the Nearings THE GOOD LIFE, which combines their two classics on back to earth living, and YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, by Dominguez and Robbin. You also might go to the Simple Living website, based on the latter book, and get some good info. It's at simpliving.net.

This one? As I said, if you are a yuppie or are otherwise wealthy and don't want to stray too far into the land of simplicity, you might actually find some use for this book.

35 people found this helpful

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Pete Greider, M.Ed.

Inspiring, fascinating, humbling book

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2019

I loved this book. The journey that Frank and Wanda describe is interesting, inspiring, and helpful, and I thank them both for being so open about their lives.

I'm baffled by the negative reviews. I consider this book a gift.

One person found this helpful

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Kochava

Can help inspire your own search for simplicity but isn't very instructive

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2013

I expected it to be more advice than story. While the story was good and compelling, sometimes it deviated into a little too much detail about things that really weren't that interesting. Overall, I'd recommend it to someone who wants inspiration to live a simpler life.

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joe robertson

i'm afraid i didn't like the writing either

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2004

maybe couples shouldn't write books together. i don't know if they were complimenting themselves, or more likely each other, but it got very tiresome. we all have to build up a certain degree of belief in ourselves, but it is not fun to read other people doing this. i thought the Goldstone's books (a couple who write about book-collecting) suffered from this, but this book really got on my nerves. i like the life they describe in the book, i just don't like all the ego that came with the description, it greatly distracted from the information. they also go on about how great their friends are, but they manage to make this annoying as well. i recommend your money or your life by dominguez & robin, or living the good life: how to live sanely & simply by the nearings instead of this book.

16 people found this helpful

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satchel loftis

A Better Life

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2001

i don't know if i'm more thankful to wanda and frank for writing this book or to my friend kurt for passing it along to me. either way, it helped change my life.
the book tells the story of how wanda and frank transformed their LA lives. mixed in with their narrative are vignettes of other peoples' searches for simplicity in their lives. maybe the word "simplicity" has become overused and its definition washed out. for me, the book showed how different folks found peace of mind on a daily basis. how they realigned their goals and actions with their values. how they stopped competing and started living.
after i read it, i took a trip to Levering Orchard with my friend kurt. we wanted to meet the authors, to let them know that their book had touched us. so we took some time off from work, drove to virginia and found the orchard. when we arrived, frank was working at the pack house. we bought some apples and told him why we were there.
frank called wanda, who was up at the house, and told her that some "fans" had arrived at the pack house and wanted to meet her. and over time, kurt and i became friends with frank and wanda. we visited them on several occasions and kurt even helped them pick apples during the last week of the season that year.
i saw how they lived ten years after the move from california. i understood what they were writing about in Simple Living, and i began changing my own life. i wouldn't say that life has become "simple", but it sure is more peaceful than it used to be. my daily actions reflect my personal values and i have learned to live well with less stuff. i even moved from california to north carolina, in the blue ridge mountains, not too far from Levering Orchard.
so thanks, wanda and frank, for writing this book. and thanks, kurt, for letting me know about it.

15 people found this helpful

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