Bill McKibben

"The escalating symptoms of global warming are startling: Hurricane Katrina, a rapidly disappearing Arctic, severe droughts and wildfires. Meanwhile, the leading expert at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change, and the British government estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars - combined. It's no longer time to debate global warming, it's time to fight it." "Drawing on the experience of 1,400 Step It Up organizers in all fifty states, Bill McKibben - the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature - and the Step It Up team explain how you can build the fight in your community college, or place of worship. Fight Global Warming Now offers the tools for your involvement in the mighty new movement that is confronting the most urgent challenge facing us today."--Jacket.

The acclaimed author of The End of Nature takes a three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two landscapes.Bill McKibben begins his journey atop Vermont's Mt. Abraham, with a stunning view to the west that introduces us to the broad Champlain Valley of Vermont, the expanse of Lake Champlain, and behind it the towering wall of the Adirondacks. "In my experience," McKibben tells us, "the world contains no finer blend of soil and rock and water and forest than that found in this scene laid out before me--a few just as fine, perhaps, but none finer. And no place where the essential human skills--cooperation, husbandry, restraint--offer more possibility for competent and graceful inhabitation, for working out the answers that the planet is posing in this age of ecological pinch and social fray."The region he traverses offers a fine contrast between diverse forms of human habitation and pure wilderness. On the Vermont side, he visits with old friends who are trying to sustain traditional ways of living on the land and to invent new ones, from wineries to biodiesel. After crossing the lake in a rowboat, he backpacks south for ten days through the vast Adirondack woods. As he walks, he contemplates the questions that he first began to raise in his groundbreaking meditation on climate change, The End of Nature: What constitutes the natural? How much human intervention can a place stand before it loses its essence? What does it mean for a place to be truly wild? Wandering Home is a wise and hopeful book that enables us to better understand these questions and our place in the natural world. It also represents some of the best nature writing McKibben has ever done.From the Hardcover edition.

The father of a single child himself, McKibben maintains that bringing one, and no more than one, child into this world will hurt neither your family nor our nation - indeed, it can be an optimistic step toward the future. Maybe One is not just an environmental argument but a highly personal and philosophical one. McKibben cites new and extensive research about the developmental strengths of only children; he finds that single kids are not spoiled, weird, selfish, or asocial, but pretty much the same as everyone else. McKibben recognizes that the transition to a stable population size won't be easy or painfree but ultimately is inevitable. Maybe One provides the basis for provocative, powerful thought and discussion that will influence our thinking for decades to come.

McKibben sets out on a journey, from his home in the Adirondack Mountains to a city in Brazil and a state in India, in search of realistic hope for the Earth. Hope, Human and Wild is an extraordinary tale of the author's travels to places that have made the most of their limited resources. Their triumphs convince McKibben that we can help the world recover from some of the damage we have done. Only a hundred years ago, the land on which McKibben's house stands in the majestic Adirondack woods was a barren, clearcut wasteland. Now he is surrounded by magnificent forest; and the beaver, the moose, and the coyote have come back. Looking for other successes, he journeys to the small Brazilian city of Curitiba, which has saved itself from the developers. A brave and gifted mayor has designed a rapid transit system that people actually want to use, the poor collaborate with architects to plan their own houses, "sanitation problems" are solved by exchanging sacks of garbage for bags of food, and hope - human - is lived out every day. In Kerala, a densely populated state in Southern India, he finds that the life expectancy, birthrate, and literacy rate rival those of America - on three hundred dollars per person per year. Awed by the remarkable accomplishments of these communities, McKibben explores the ways we can not only confront our problems and find solutions to them, but thrive in the process. Hope, Human and Wild is a confirmation of hope for the future of our planet.

An excellent study of the modern extraction of man from his surroundings. Mr. McKibben, through an enlightening experiment of media vs. nature, pits McLuhan against Emerson to find the value of the information received when one relies solely on their respective subjects of study. Can a tree teach more than a TV? Find out, before it's too late!

"A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic. As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law. In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that's become more popular than ever--seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of 'Ethan Allen Day' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement"--

"An anthology for backpackers, mountaineers, and lovers of the outdoors. The collection contains some of the most powerful wilderness essays, poetry, and short stories. From Emerson, Muir, and Shackelton to Kerouac, Dillard, and Stegner, the writings discuss the wilderness’s transformative and transcendent power on humans living in ephemeral conditions"--