Recommended Books

This is a partial list of books I have enjoyed relating to appropriate technology, social systems, history, economics and whatever else I think relates to the subject of this blog.  I once had a large library of natural building books, but I largely gave them away to downsize and fit in a motorhome full-time.

• Small is Beautiful – Technology as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher
• What’s Mine is Yours – The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsam and Roo Rogers
• Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky
• Second Nature by Michael Pollan
• Capitalism, A Structural Genocide by Garry Leech
• Confronting Collapse by Michael C. Ruppert
• The Crash of 2016 by Thom Hartmann
• Democracy at Work – The Cure for Capitalism by Richard Wolff
• Economics:  Marxian versus Neoclassical by Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnickl
• Capitalism Hits the Fan by Richard Wolff
• From Eternity to Here by Sean Carrol
• Internal Combustion by Edwin Black
• Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges
• IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black
• Nazi Nexus by Edwin Black
• The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg
• Reinventing Collapse by Dmitry Orlov
• Garbageland by Elizabeth Royte
• Overshoot by William R Catton Jr.
• The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
• Edison and the Electric Chair by Mark Essig
• The Best That Money Can’t Buy by Jacque Fresco
• Humanizing the Economy by John Restakis
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
• Made to Brake by Giles Slade
• The End of Money and the Future of Civilization by Thomas H Greco Jr.
• Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
• The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc J Seifer
• The Biochar Solution by Albert Bates
• Exposed by Mark Schapiro
• More Work For Mother by Roth Cowen Schwartz
• Anything by James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, Dimitri Orlov, Derrick Jensen
• Heat and Cold by Barry Donaldson and Bernard Nagengast
• Refrigeration in America by Oscar Edward Anderson
• Refrigeration Nation by Jonathan Rees
• Longer Lasting Products. Alternatives to a throwaway society by Tim Cooper
• Emotionally Durable Design by Jonathan Chapman
• Technopoly by Neil Postman
• Technology as Freedom by Ronald C Tobey
• Muddling Toward Frugality by Warren Johnson
• Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Post Industrial Society by Theodore Roszak
  
• Severed.  A History of Heads Lost and Found
• The Glass Cage by Nicholas G Carr
• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
• Air Conditioning America by Gail Cooper
• Making the Modern World.  Materials and DeMaterialization by Vaclav Smil
• Sun in A Bottle The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking by Charles Seif
• Humanity on A Tightrope Thoughts on Empathy, Family, and Big Changes for A Viable Future by Paul Ehrlich
• Monsters The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology by Edward Regis
• Techno-fix Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment by Michael Huesemann
• The Age of Radiance The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson
• Eaarth by Bill Mckibbon
• The Way We Never Were American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz
• Chilled How Refrigeration Changed the World, and Might Do So Again by Tom Jackson
• The Fall of Rome And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins
• The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford
• Cool Comfort America’s Romance With Air-conditioning By Ackermann, Marsha E.
• Whatever Happened to the Metric System? How America Kept Its Feet By Marciano, John Bemelmans
• The Big Roads The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways By Swift, Earl
• When Life Nearly Died The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time By Benton, M. J.
• The Race for What’s Left The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources By Klare, Michael T.
• The Collapse of Complex Societies By Tainter, Joseph A.
• A Short History of Progress By Wright, Ronald
• A Short History of Nuclear Folly [mad Scientists, Dithering Nazis, Lost Nukes, and Catastrophic Cover-ups] By Herzog, Rudolph
• Silent Snow The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic By Cone, Marla
• One Summer America, 1927 By Bryson, Bill
• The Vanishing Face of Gaia A Final Warning By Lovelock, James
• Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution By Fortey, Richard A.
• The Medea Hypothesis Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-destructive? By Ward, Peter Douglas
• Snowball Earth The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know It By Walker, Gabrielle
• The World as It Is : Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress By Hedges, Chris
• Traffic Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) By Vanderbilt, Tom
• Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt By Hedges, Chris
• Storms of My Grandchildren The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity By Hansen, James E.
• Austerity The History of A Dangerous Idea By Blyth, Mark
• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Close Encounters With Addiction By Maté, Gabor
• Cat’s Cradle By Vonnegut, Kurt
• Nineteen Eighty-four By Orwell, George
• Ecotopia The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston By Callenbach, Ernest
• Slaughterhouse-five, Or, The Children’s Crusade A Duty-dance With Death By Vonnegut, Kurt
• Living in the End Times By Žižek, Slavoj
• The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World by John Michael Greer
• Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on Technologies that Limit our Autonomy, Self-Sufficiency and Freedom by Dmitry Orlov
• The Myth of Human Supremacy by Derrick Jensen
• Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen
• Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How by Theodore John Kaczynski
• Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, a.k.a. “The Unabomber”
• Rewild or Die: Revolution and Renaissance at the End of Civilization by Urban Scout
• Green Wizardry – Conservation, Solar Power, Organic Gardening, and Other Hands-on Skills From the Appropriate Tech Toolkit by Greer, John Michael
• The Hidden Life of Trees – What They Feel, How They Communicate : Discoveries From A Secret World by Wohlleben, Peter
• How the Post Office Created AmericaA HistoryBy Gallagher, Winifred
• Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander
• Human Scale RevisitedA New Look at the Classic Case for A Decentralist Future By Sale, Kirkpatrick
• Rebels Against the Future The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution : Lessons for the Computer Age By Sale, Kirkpatrick
• Pandora’s Seed The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization By Wells, Spencer
• The Long Thaw How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate By Archer, David
• Waking up to the Dark Ancient Wisdom for A Sleepless Age By Strand, Clark
• The Ends of the World Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions By Brannen, Peter
• The World Without Us By Weisman, Alan
• The Flooded Earth Our Future in A World Without Ice Caps By Ward, Peter D.
• The Long Summer How Climate Changed Civilization By Fagan, Brian M.
• The Flooded Earth Our Future in A World Without Ice Caps
• The Big Thirst The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water
• The Unnatural History of the Sea By Roberts, Callum
• Radio Free Vermont A Fable of Resistance
• The Art of Loading Brush New Agrarian Writings By Berry, Wendell
• One Second After By Forstchen, William R.
• Planet of Slums Paperback by Mike Davis
• Under A Green Sky Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future By Ward, Peter D.
• Off the Map(an Expedition Deep Into Imperialism, the Global Economy, and Other Earthly Whereabouts)By Glendinning, Chellis
• The 10,000 Year ExplosionHow Civilization Accelerated Human EvolutionBy Cochran, Gregory
• A New History of LifeThe Radical New Discoveries About the Origins and Evolution of Life on EarthBy Ward, Peter D.
• The Retro Future: Looking to the Past to Reinvent the Future by Greer, John Michael
• Retrotopia by Greer, John Michael
• Everything is Going According to Plan by Orlov, Dmitry
• Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization by Richard Manning

• Principles of Mechanical Refrigeration by H.J. Macintire – 1928
• Power’s Practical Refrigeration by The Editorial Staff of Power – 1921
• Household Refrigeration by H.B. Hull – 1926 and 1933 editions
• Compendium of Mechanical Refrigeration and Engineering by J.E. Siebel – 1918
• Modern Electric and Gas Refrigerators by A.D. Althouse and Carl H Turnquist – 1933
• Mechanical Refrigeration by Fred E Matthews – 1912
• Refrigeration by James A Moyer and Raymond U Fitz – 1928 and 1932 editions
• Air Conditioning and Refrigeration by Burgess H Jennings and Samual R Lewis – 1939
• Theory of Mechanical Refrigeration by N. R. Sparks – 1938
• Ice Refrigerating Machines by York Manufacturing – 1892
• Audel’s Refrigeration and Air Conditioning – 1945
• Principles of Engineering Thermodynamics by Paul J Kiefer, Gilbert Ford Kinney, Milton C Stuart – 1930

The last group is all out of print, I’m sure.  Some editions of these jewels can be found on abebooks.com, or many digital forms are on openlibrary.org.  My refrigeration library has grown considerably, so this list is far from updated.