Land & Nature Stewardship

Agriculture, Urban agriculture, Edible Landscaping
* "Eat Locally" campaigns include Localvores of Vermont (website offers a clear explanation).  Also Locavores of the San Francisco Bay Area.
* Halweil, Brian, Eat Here
* Jeavons, John, How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine.
An information-packed, user-friendly book on vegetable gardening using the biodynamic method.
* Path to Freedom
An urban homestead run by a family in Pasadena, California. Some of their yield records are on their website. These yields are astounding given the small size of the property.  Additionally, their garden is beautiful (several photos of it are included on the Legacy website).
* Skinner, Katy, The City Chicken website
How to raise chickens in the city
* Guerra, Michael, The Edible Container Garden: Growing Fresh Food in Small Spaces
Edibles gardening in containers, with beautiful photographs and sound organic techniques.  Permaculture concepts are integrated.
* Caplin, Adam and James, Urban Eden (London: Kyle Cathie Ltd, 2000)
Wonderful photographs of the possibilities for container gardening on small patios and balconies.
* McGee and Stuckey, Bountiful Container.
Detailed instructions, vegetable by vegetable (and some fruits) for growing edibles in containers. Not necessarily organic, but good information on pot size, and selection of varieties which will cope well with containers.  Use in conjunction with the concepts of Guerra, above.
* Jones, Louisa, The Art of French Vegetable Gardening.
The coffee table book of vegetable gardening. Beautiful photos, proving that edible gardens can be gorgeous.
* Food Not Lawns
An Oregon based network, whose name indicates their focus. They emphasize Permaculture and biodynamics.
* Poyourow, Joanne, "Obtain a Yield"
An article promoting edible landscaping which explains why - even within this country of plenty and abundance - we need to grow food. Opens in pdf format.
* Poyourow, Joanne, Edible Landscaping resource list
A specialty resource list created for a lecture and series of articles about Sustainable Urban Landscaping

Nature Stewardship within the City
* National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat program
This program encourages gardeners to plan spaces for wildlife amid their gardens. (see JP's garden at gallery #11185)
* Treepeople
A remarkable organization working since the mid-1970's to improve LA's urban forest.
* Heal The Bay
An organization which organizes trash pickups, fundraisers and political efforts to preserve the Santa Monica Bay in the Los Angeles area.  Seek similar community service organizations in your hometown!

Built Environment

* As you read books and articles within the realm of Built Environment, it is important to stay focused on the goal of Sustainability. Many technologies are emerging which call themselves "green building", yet cater more to the elite toxin-free health concerns of the upper middle class, rather than focusing on resource efficiency, reducing consumption, reducing shipping, and lower eco-footprint. The ultimate goal must remain that of moving society toward new ways of Sustainable human existence.
* Potts, Michael, The New Independent Home: People and Houses that Harvest the Sun, Wind and Water (Chelsea Green, 1999)
An inspirational volume full of real examples of houses constructed as Legacy's fictional Vernados & Associates would build.
* Black, Kent, “Off the Grid: Sol Food,” and "Off the Grid: San Fernando Valley Earthship," Los Angeles Times Magazine, September 25, 2005.
Two solid examples of movement toward Sustainability.

Tools & Technology

* Ausubel, Kenneth, editor, Nature’s Operating Instructions and Restoring the Earth
Two compilations of essays by the Bioneers, innovators who are working in all fields to solve environmental and social issues.  Hope-inspiring because they focus on solutions.
* Berthold-Bond, Annie, Clean and Green: The Complete Guide to Nontoxic and Environmentally Safe Housekeeping (Woodstock, NY: Ceres Press, 1994)
How to clean house in an earth-friendly manner.
Culture & Education
* Green Car Congress
News, typically positive, about new advances in greener mobility.  While the technologies here are driven by such concepts as Peak Oil, they remain clearly of the "Transition era" - technologies which will be outmoded as society moves further toward true Sustainable existence.
* Bookfinder.com
In the spirit of "reuse/recycle," this handy website networks used booksellers, and can track down books which are out-of-print or outside the U.S. (as many Permaculture and Sustainability books unfortunately seem to be)

Culture & Education

Action, Changing the Culture
* AtKisson, Alan, "Chapter on Innovation Diffusion from Believing Cassandra"
This excellent explanation of Change Agents, Transformers, Reactionaries and Mainstreamers is available online as a pdf.  (This chapter was the source of Legacy character Steve's chapter 4 LegacyLA presentation.)
* AtKisson, Alan, Believing Cassandra
* Hollender, Jeffrey, How to Make the World a Better Place: 116 Ways You Can Make a Difference (1994)
This book is more up-to-date than the classic 50 Things You Can Do To Save the Earth. It includes explanations of the issues, and the action items range from everyday habits to sweeping life-direction issues. This book includes social change as well as environmental change.
* Dauncey, Guy, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (2001)
This book contains some good action ideas, however it must be read with a heavy "filter." While the title makes it clear that it was written to solve climate change, some of the suggestions could be better crafted to move us closer to Sustainability.
* The New American Dream website
Another resource which I feel must be read with a heavy "filter."  While there are valuable notes here as a stepping stone away from mainstream culture, this website continues to condone quite a high level of consumption, which we will have to move beyond as we reach toward Sustainability.
* Chin, Elizabeth, "I will simply survive" (Grist.org March 2006)
A daring article which bravely questions green-luxury as a substitue consumerism.
* The Orion Grassroots Network
A large network of environmental and community organizations in North America
* Schumacher, E. F., Small is beautiful : economics as if people mattered : 25 years later-- with commentaries
* Greenest Before Dawn: Permaculture
a great collection of links to online articles about Permaculture.

Education, Next Generation
* John Holt, Learning all the Time
Profound observations about how children learn, despite the assertations of the school systems.
* Children's Sustainability Booklist, a part of Legacy Resources

Health & Spiritual Well-being

Maintaining Health
* Fallon, Sally, Nourishing Traditions
Billed as a cookbook, yet it is a precious resource for the extensive sidebars about maintaining health in a time of misinformation and toxic ingredients. Not vegetarian, and it tells you why.
* Shepherd, Renee, Recipes from a Kitchen Garden and More Recipes from a Kitchen Garden
Garden-to-table recipes, where most ingredients in a given recipe grow and ripen in similar season, under similar growing conditions, so that you might harvest and then walk right into the kitchen to cook.
* D’Avila-Latourrette, Victor, Twelve Months of Monastery Soups
Garden-to-table recipes, where most ingredients in a given recipe grow and ripen in similar season, similar growing conditions, so that you might harvest and then walk right into the kitchen to cook. Remarkably simple and frugal, yet gourmet in palate.
* Duncan, Alice Likowski, Your Healthy Child (Tarcher, 1991)
Lists common childhood ailments, symptoms, and home care, including herbal, acupressure, homeopathic and nutritional.  For each ailment, it gives the do-it-yourself care, together with recommendations as to when to seek trained medical assistance.
* Hay, Louise L., Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them (Carson, CA: Hay House, 1984)
Another tool toward maintaining health is the power within our minds, our mind-body connection.  This tiny book is a chart of afflictions, with affirmations to heal each.

Spirit
* Loeb, Paul Rogat, The Impossible Will Take a Little Time
A collection of hope-filled essays, compiled post 9/11, many on environmental issues
* McKibben, Bill, $100 Holiday
A slim volume which uses the Christmas holiday to illustrate divorcing consumerism, instead going deeper into our hearts and souls.
* Gottlieb, Roger S., A Spirituality of Resistance: Finding a Peaceful Heart and Protecting the Earth
Explores the activist's contradiction of knowing the magnitude of environmental destruction, yet remaining motivated to create change.
* Leider, Richard J., The Power of Purpose (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1985, ISBN 0-449012849-7)
A remarkable how-to book about discovering purpose in your life, tapping the power of that purpose, living from purpose.  I prefer the 1985 edition rather than the rewritten version.
* Edelman, Marian Wright, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours (Beacon Press, 1992)
This beautifully written essay, letter, reflective book, contains many treasures about living a life of giving and purpose.
* Gary Gardner, “Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World” (WorldWatch paper #164)
Encourages environmentalists to work with religious thinkers toward a Sustainable society
* Religion and Environment
http://daphne.palomar.edu/calenvironment/religion.htm
A webpage which indexes the pro-environment aspects of many major world religions

Finance & Economics

* 'The Capital of Earth,' webpage by the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
A quick-read introduction to the four types of capital, including natural and human capital.
* Hawken, Paul, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism
A new way of thinking about business transactions, together with a celebration of green innovations in major corporations worldwide.  An excellent listing of steps in the right direction, although some examples cited clearly belong to the "Transition era" and will be revamped or replaced as society reaches further toward a Sustainable existence.
* Schumacher, E.F., Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered - 25 Years Later with Commentaries
Schumacher's work is the source of the four types of capital referred to by Hawken.  This recent republication of the classic work includes sidebar quotes which are equally as fascinating as the original material.

Land Tenure & Community Governance

FairShares
* Sachs, Jeffrey R, The End of Poverty
Extreme poverty could be banished from human populations by the year 2025, and it is remarkably inexpensive to do so.  (Legacy character Barry Alden implements several of Sachs' suggestions.)
* Heifer International http://www.heifer.org/
A charity which embodies the concept “if you teach a man to fish…” by giving livestock and husbandry training to needy families worldwide.
* Elkington, John and Mark Lee, "Fatigue of Nations: What green looks like to the world's emerging nations" (Grist.org March 2006)
A brief but well-written online article which addresses everything from green-washing, to the issue that eat-local and buy-local campaigns can look like trade barriers, to the reality that our consumerism-excess culture is the envy and goal of developing nations.
* Menzel, Peter, et al, Material World: A Global Family Portrait (Sierra Club 1994)
Photographs of families in countries around the world, together with the entirety of their possessions.  A profound visual statement about fairshares and eco-footprint.

Community
* Chiras, Dan, Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods (New Society Publishers 2003) A wonderful collection of ideas about creating community cohesiveness, applicable to mainstream neighborhoods which would like to evolve, as well as to more intentionally-organized communities.

Government
* Speth, James Gustave, Red Sky at Morning
Insightful commentary on international politics pertaining to global warming, from a man who was advisor to two U.S. presidents.  (Ari's campaigns in Legacy chapters 8-10 depict many of Speth's ideas.)
* Clinton Global Initiative, September 2005
A global summit coordinated by Former President Clinton to address poverty, religious conflict, global warming and government corruption. “… the hectic, informal style of the conference contributed to its success.
"The controlled chaos is one way to get creativity. The intensity of it, the physical rush, the intimacy created the kind of dialogue that leads to synergy," [who?] Holbrooke said.
"The U.N. by contrast is sterile, overly concerned with protocol, overly formal, filled with set-piece speeches. This is what the U.N. in theory is supposed to be but can't." from “Clinton Global Initiative gets $1.25B,” CNN.com, September 17, 2005, (link to source)
* Ozone Hole plateauing,
“U.S. scientists reported last month that the ozone layer has stopped shrinking but it will take decades to start recovering."
CNN.com, Sept. 16, 2005 (link to source)

Permaculture Ethical & Design Principles

* David Holmgren’s Permaculture Flower (scroll to bottom of page) and Permaculture Design Principles
* Holmgren, David, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.
* Burnett, Graham, Permaculture, A Beginner’s Guide selected portions available online
This illustrated booklet gives a great overview of the concept of Permaculture and the interrelated nature of its concepts. Simple enough to use with older children.

Photo credits: The Permaculture Flower, copyright David Holmgren; Kids' Playground 5 by Ivan Philipov, Plovdiv, PB, Bulgaria; International flags by M. Proebster, Heidelberg, Germany; Hand Shake by Laura Kennedy, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa; gardens of the Path to Freedom urban homestead, Pasadena, CA, photo by the author; Santa Monica Pier 1 by Jhezie Lim, Lakewood, CA.