Paperless Books

In our drive to walk our sustainability talk and to make book publishing an environmentally responsible enterprise, New Society Publishers committed in 2001 to printing all of its books on 100% Post Consumer-Waste Recycled paper and, in 2005, became North America's first carbon neutral book publisher by offsetting all of its carbon emissions. Having just completed the calculations for this year's carbon neutral offsets, it seems an appropriate time to announce our next step along this same path: the paperless book!

We are excited that many NSP titles are now available as paperless books – or e-books – through www.ebooks.com and http://shop.ebrary.com/ where you can download books to your favorite reading device. NSP is also working with Ebrary, Ebook Library, and Gibson Library Connections to make our titles available in ebook format to the global library community. —Enjoy your Ebooks to Build a New Society!

Two Superpowers and Two Possible Futures

With terror and counter-terror dominating the world's airwaves, there's no more appropriate time perhaps to cry out "Enough Blood Shed…" This is the title of our newest "Solutions" book to come off press, by Mary-Wynne Ashford and Guy Dauncey. With a foreword by Arun Gandhi and featuring 101 solutions to the problems of violence, it is a key book for a long time to come — and especially for the World Peace Conference being held this June in Vancouver, BC.

• Read the Contents
• Get inspired by the Advance Praise
• Check out a couple of introductory sections

Lemon Lavender Spritzer, anyone?

Our newest cookbook to be released is ExtraVeganZa -- an unusual book of vegan delights authored by field biologist, farmer and B&B owner, Laura Matthias. It will please the eyes with its natural dyes, stimulate your palate and get you out in the garden!

• Read Laura's unusual entry into the world of cookbooks in her introduction
• Check out the section on Beverages and Frozen Treats – including Lemon Lavender Spritzer, and more!

Heating Water with the Sun

— Simple enough. But why did it take this long to come up with a good book on the topic? There's no easy answer to that question, but if you want to replace fossil fuels in about as efficient and easy a way possible, then Solar Water Heating is for you. Bob Ramlow, from the great Mid West Renewable Energy Association (MREA), shares his extensive knowledge of the subject in this beautiful and well-illustrated new book on the hottest topic of the year!

• Check the Contents
• Read the Introduction

Beefing Up Biodiesel

The biodiesel movement is hard to keep up with, but this new offering from William Kemp will keep you up to date for a good while. Focusing on the production of biodiesel fuel that meets international standards, Biodiesel Basics and Beyond cranks the level of alternative fuel wisdom up a notch.

• Check the Contents
• Read the Preface
• Read The Introduction

Make Better Use of Your Car!

Before abandoning your accustomed lifestyle entirely, there are relatively easy things you can do to ease the burden of Peak Oil and climate change. One way to make a major difference is to get smarter about how you use you car. This and other strategies are all included in a charming little book coming off press shortly: Cutting Your Car Use: Save Money, Be Healthy, Be Green! by Randall Ghent with Anna Semlyen, illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

• Check out the Contents
• Read the chapter, "Making Better Use of Your Car"

Learning from Germany's Experience with Renewables

A renewable energy leader two decades ago, the US now lags behind Germany and Japan. Due off press shortly, Energy Switch: Proven Solutions for a Renewable Future pays special attention to Germany's success, exploring what can be learned from its experience. The book examines the shortcomings and benefits of a variety of energy sources, as well as such initiatives as ecological tax reform and tax rebates, the success of efficiency measures and the vision of demand management, concluding that the secret of success may lie in attitudes and policies, rather than in technology…

• Check out the Contents
• Read the last chapter, "Living to Learn"

Bush gets the word from Time…

It had to happen somehow, but who would have thought that it would take Time magazine to disrupt the Bush regime's incoherence over climate change? Time's recent cover story (April 3, 2006), a Special Report on Global Climate Change, was tagged: "Be Worried. Be VERY Worried." It gives the lie to the US administration's refusal to admit there is a problem with how we're living on Planet Earth that we need to address. It also includes eight pages that feature people working on solutions. But if you want a really positive and practical program, we recommend Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Climate Change by Guy Dauncey as well as our other new books below that almost all focus on how you can furrow your brow, yes, but actually make a difference, right now…

Free Heat!

Author Dan Chiras lives 8,500 feet above sea level nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. But despite the chilly nature of his climate, he has no heating bill… If you are intrigued by this, then you are on the likely list of becoming a Renewable Energy fan. You may also want to find out more from his new book The Homeowners Guide to Renewable Energy: Achieving Energy Independence from Wind, Solar, Biomass and Hydropower available in April. In the meantime, why not read more about Passive Solar, Active Solar and Heat Pumps – or, "free heat" – by checking out this excerpt:

• Chapter 4: Free Heat
• Check out the Contents

The Living Roof…

… is just one of the fascinating features of Rob Roy's recipe for underground houses. A time-honored technique, building houses that are sheltered by earth bestows numerous benefits — including the fact that you can grow stuff on your roof instead of having to keep it clean! Favorite author Rob Roy has done it again by writing yet another constructive masterpiece, Earth-Sheltered Houses: How to Build an Affordable Underground Home — off press in early May. Find out more about living roofs from this excerpt:

• Chapter 8: The Living Roof
• Or check the Contents:

Building by DVD

With all the great books available on natural building techniques, you'd have guessed it wouldn't take long for someone to document some of the construction work on video. Well, it took a long time, but it sure was worth the wait! We are now very pleased to be distributing Ted Owen's Building with Awareness: The Construction of a Hybrid Home DVD : a full 162 minutes of high quality professional video that gives you award-winning quality footage of how to do it, every step of the way.

Available: 6.5 million new jobs in the energy sector

Peak Oil fear can be a paralyzing phenomenon when the future looks nothing but energy-short and bleak. But Barry Hanson doesn't subscribe to this view. Rather, he sees an abundant future of renewable energies – along with thousands of jobs. Energy Power Shift: Benefiting from Today's New Technologies is another book we are distributing, and it focuses a lot on the energy available in or own backyards from waste and biomass, as well as the increasingly attractive economics of the energy market. As the author says, our choice is simple: to purchase your energy from Saudi princes or from North Dakota farmers… Available now.

• Read the Introduction

April Special-teas

If you're like us west-coasters, you're already lucky enough to be getting your hands in the dirt as the garden season starts to gather momentum. But in case you're the type who needs to be told what to do and when to do it, this is the gardening book for you! A Year on the Garden Path: A 52-Week Organic Gardening Guide, by Carolyn Herriot is packed full of sound advice, tips and treats. In April, for instance, your treat is to learn about Compost Teas.

• Check out the April section (2.2 MB) in full.

Planet U

To many people, the university has become mostly irrelevant, at worst, or a disappointment, at best. Michael M'Gonigle and Justine Starke want to change that. They see the university as a viable candidate for leading the movement toward sustainability. In Planet U: Sustaining the World, Reinventing the University, they argue an eloquent and convincing case for this aged institution to cast off its burden as cog-producer for industry-as-usual in favor of actively embracing its responsibility as the world's largest industry – to save the world. Provocative and entertaining, it will be off press in May.

• Read Chapter 1: tree-sit
• Check out the Contents

The (first and) last word on Ecocities

Also anticipated in May, we are proud to announce an all-new edition of Richard Register's classic EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature. Updated to the present, and featuring hundreds of the author's own whimsical and visionary illustrations, EcoCities is a keystone piece of work for imagining a future beyond Peak Oil…

• Read the Foreword by Hazel Henderson and the Preface
• Check out the Contents

Welcome from the Warm Wet North…

Although we're a little late with this greeting, we wish you a very exciting and rewarding new year! And although it's considered clichéd to talk about the weather, it's hard to avoid it this winter. With the exception of a single week in late November, winter seems to be passing those of us in southern British Columbia by – if, by "winter," you think frost, snow and ice. Temperatures have been averaging several degrees above freezing, and if the forecasts are correct, we will have had perpetual rainfall for most of December and January. California has experienced similar extremes, leading to devastating floods and the loss of much infrastructure at Real Goods Solar Living Center (see for yourself and consider helping out if you can: http://www.solarliving.org/flood.cfm). Of course, the naysayers shrug off the idea that such weather changes may be connected to climate change. But those who attended the Montreal Climate Change conference last December may beg to differ. Guy Dauncey, author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change was there. You may find his blog of interest: www.bcsea.org/blog. Who knows, it may give you some spice for those on-going conversations about the weather…?

Growing Food in Hard Times

As you'll see elsewhere in this newsletter, it's probable that the production of oil peaked last year. And as you'll know if you are a regular New Society reader, we have taken it upon ourselves to deal as exhaustively as we can with the issue of Peak Oil and how we may best respond to it. So it is with great pleasure that we announce that Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times is just off press. Authored by west coast gardening 'guru,' Steve Solomon (who also owned and ran Territorial Seeds for many years), the book is a gem, giving you all the tips you need to start growing your own backyard food garden – and exploding a few myths about commonly-held intensive gardening practices along the way.

• Check out the Contents
• Read the Introduction

Dreaming of Sun-Drying

It's hard not to dream of the sun when the rain is so incessant, and so for all of you escapees from winter reality, we have a book designed to get your summer juices flowing! Now off press is The Solar Food Dryer: How to Make and Use Your Own High-Performance, Sun-Powered Food Dehydrator, by Eben Fodor. Packed with illustrated instructions and helpful photographs, it will enable you to make a low-cost, low-tech solar dryer that can preserve all your garden produce. If you can't for the moment afford to go solar for your power needs, you can make a major stride forward by going solar on your food preserving – and avoid the possibility of a power-outage spoiling all that food stashed in the freezer!

• Check out the Contents
• Read the Introduction and Chapter 1

Protecting the Place Called Home

Your home may be clean, but is it safe? Shocking evidence now points to the home as one of the worst offenders when it comes to exposure to toxic chemicals — and cleaning products bear much of the blame. Not only are the chemicals that comprise most such products unregulated, but finding out what ingredients a cleaner contains is hard work. Now, thanks to the good folk at Seventh Generation, all the information you need is packed concisely into a single book. Due off press in February, Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe and Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning will appall you with the facts of just how dangerous regular household cleaners are, but also give you excellent guidance on how to avoid the worst offenders. Authored in part by the father-daughter team of Jeffrey and Meika Hollender, with Geoff Davis and Reed Doyle, this book is a must-have for modern life.

• This is the Contents
• Read the Introduction