George Marshall
The Earth party
Love and Revolution at a Time of Climate Change
Pen Press, 304pp, £8.99
ISBN: 978-1906710118
Climate change seems to have replaced nuclear holocaust as the Armageddon of choice in literature and film. George Marshall’s novel is more interesting than most – especially to members of the Green Party – as it focuses on the debate as to how to keep society going in the case of such an event and what kind of a political credo and structure is needed. The main character is an active member (but not one of the top-dogs) of an environmental party. He faces some hard choices about loyalty to ideals and party but his allotment skills prove useful in the end. His new girlfriend has just returned from nursing in Africa where climate change has made the work too dangerous to continue. It might have been interesting to hear more of her recollections.
While the novel doesn’t exactly romanticise the hardship, it isn’t a depressing read, so some would doubtless say it isn’t realistic enough. There is a companion work called Earth Cell which gives the full story of one of the minor incidents in this book and is aimed at a younger readership, but works well for adults too.
Jill Perry
Wendy Sarkissian, Nancy Hofer, Yollana Shore, et al
Kitchen Table Sustainability
Practical Recipes for Community Engagement with Sustainability
London: Earthscan, 400pp, £19.99.
ISBN: 978-1844076147
This book explores community level action for sustainability through actual practice. It is, quite simply, loaded with examples of good practice in the operation of voluntary groups and coalitions. As such, it is highly relevant to transition town activities and any other activity involving a diversity of people, views and groups. Not content with encouraging the ‘usual suspects’ it touches on engaging with young people, ethnic minorities and the elderly. It even examines the reasons why some people do not join in such activities.
The stress upon inclusiveness is emphasised in various ways by the book’s five female authors, drawing upon experiences in a number of countries. The significance of linguistic barriers is not missed nor the need to evaluate whether a situation would create fertile conditions for the growth of a new community effort to enhance sustainability. It is striking that the focus of the authors is on cultural sustainability rather than an overtly ecological approach. This is in sympathy with transition town work, and to a degree avoids the need constantly to repeat scientific or economic ideas about sustainability which only resonate with some parts of the potential audience.
The book only has one flaw: the rather ‘folksy’ or sentimental title that could lead to it ending up on bookshelves housing cookery books. Perhaps this is not entirely a bad thing. Definitely recommended reading for community activists.
Steve Dawe
David Boyle
Money Matters:
Putting the Eco into Economics – Global Crisis and Local Solutions
Bristol: Alastair Sawday, 221pp, £7.99.
ISBN: 978-1906136208
A clear, concise, no-nonsense critique of all that is wrong with the current economic system. Written in a highly readable style, it is readily understandable to the non-economist. Covering the history of money, the emergence of virtual money, why money is a poor measure of true worth, the iniquity of charging interest and great crashes of the past, Boyle exposes the limitations of conventional economics. Then come the alternatives: local economic systems, consumer co-ops, the Transition movement, the concept of Local Alchemy, swap shops, LETS, tradeable energy quotas, ethical trading and downshifting as ways of decoupling from the madness of the current unsustainable system. At the end of each chapter is an eye-opening statistic or two, plus suggested further reading.
In all, this is a positive book which shows it doesn’t have to be this way – and puts forward some of the tools to help the reader respond appropriately. Read this book and then pass it on to a skeptical friend to help them confront the modern economic madness.
Euan McPhee
John Reader
The Untold History of the Potato
London: Vintage, 320pp, £8.99.
ISBN: 978-0099474791
From a toxic tuber found growing in the unforgiving Andean environment to the ubiquitous french fry, the potato’s story is more interesting than you might imagine. The author makes a good case for his premise that ‘the innocent potato has facilitated exploitation wherever it has been introduced and cultivated’; describing the way in which the potato aided and abetted the Spanish conquistadors and absentee English landlords during the Irish potato famine, to name but two examples. This book is well researched and covers not just history but botany, genetics and nutrition.
Apparently we need not worry about getting fat eating potatoes, they provide highly balanced nutrition. This has enabled people across the planet to work harder and reproduce faster. We may well worry that the existence of blight makes our modern spud the most chemically dependant crop on the planet, requiring $2 billion worth of fungicides a year.
In spite of spending much of the book bemoaning how the poorest people have usually suffered worse at the hands of potato-based progress, the author rather bizarrely rounds the book off with a rallying call for capitalism and applauds the potato’s role in perpetuating a growing consumer culture; an ending I fear that may leave many Green World readers choking on their (organic) mash.
Caroline Allen
Mark Gold
Cranks and Revolutions
Green Print, 240pp, £9.95
ISBN: 978-1854250971
This book is a fictionalised journey through the life of a political activist through the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. It is told with humour and no little attention to detail.
Anyone familiar with CND marches, animal rights activism, and radical politics more generally, will find much here that they recognise, and will, if you’re like me, laugh at the unerring accuracy of the depictions of those people and actions.
This is a book that, while clearly sympathetic to radical political action, does have a real sense of humour about the realities of it, particularly in the arena of animal rights and in the years before the right to protest was more restricted in 1994. I found it funny and sharply observant by turns, taking me back, as it did on more than one occasion, to my own experiences of protesting in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Overall this is a book to take on a long train journey and let it take you back to earlier days of radical protest/politics in the UK. If you’re happy with that, and don’t expect a surfeit of intellectual challenge, then you’ll enjoy this book.
Matt Follett
