Here are 20 books that Holy Shit fans have personally recommended if you like
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I developed my love for landscape growing up in Sussex and studying at Oxford University. For several decades, I have worked as an academic geographer in New Zealand. It’s a country dramatically transformed from forest and wetland to introduced grasslands. These were created originally to supply British consumers with primary products, although nowadays, markets in East Asia are important. Living at the edge of the world has long turned my interests toward environmental histories and global environmental futures. How can we live and eat more sustainably, how can we use the land and water we have more responsibly, and how can we restore biodiversity in ravaged landscapes for future generations?
The author and her husband are pioneers of one of the best-known rewilding schemes in Britain at their estate at Knepp in West Sussex. They began a quarter century ago, after financial losses from conventional farming of their heavy clay soils, with its reliance on expensive oil-derived inputs, became unsustainable.
She describes rewilding as restoration by letting go, although with the help of grazing animals such as pigs, ponies, and longhorn cattle. The book is a rich evocation of a landscape evolving as a remarkable array of wild species flourish. It is also a valuable record of the debates about rewilding. In 2023, it was made into a documentary film.
'A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land, this should be conservation's salvation; this should be its future; this is a new hope' - Chris Packham
In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the 'Knepp experiment', a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex, using free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope.
Winner of the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Book Shop Literary Prize.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Home food production & self-sufficiency was Joann Grohman’s lifelong enthusiasm. With a young, hungry family of eight children, she started milking cows by hand and did so until she was almost 90 years old. She simply could not imagine life without a family cow, a remarkable animal that makes grass into nutritious milk and cream that can feed people, pigs, and chickens, as well as provide manure to grow vegetables. When asked if having a cow means feeling stuck on the farm, she countered that a cow supports a beautiful life that can be found in no other way.
A highly innovative book on the why and how of keeping chickens and other poultry without dependence on buying chicken feed from the feed store.
There is nothing new about keeping chickens to process your weeds and leftovers into human food—people have relied on them for thousands of years—but purchasing large volumes of expensive feed to produce eggs is not sustainable or practical. This book will solve that problem for you.
The first edition of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock helped thousands of small-scale farmers and smallholders adopt a practical model for working with chickens and other domestic fowl based on natural systems.
In this expanded and thoroughly revised edition, readers will find plenty of all-new material. Author Harvey Ussery introduces readers to his new favorite breed of chicken, Icelandics; describes how he manages his breeding flock using a clan mating system; presents detailed information on the use of trapnests and record-keeping spreadsheets for evaluating breeding hen performance; and provides step-by-step instructions for construction of an ingeniously designed mobile poultry shelter.
Home food production & self-sufficiency was Joann Grohman’s lifelong enthusiasm. With a young, hungry family of eight children, she started milking cows by hand and did so until she was almost 90 years old. She simply could not imagine life without a family cow, a remarkable animal that makes grass into nutritious milk and cream that can feed people, pigs, and chickens, as well as provide manure to grow vegetables. When asked if having a cow means feeling stuck on the farm, she countered that a cow supports a beautiful life that can be found in no other way.
Joann considered the chapter "Your Child Has the Right to Be Beautiful" one of the most important essays ever written. It shows the relationship between diet, bone structure, and beauty. At a time when she had five children under five, this book completely changed her approach to nutrition and motherhood. It turned her into the iconoclast she very much became, known for putting all accepted wisdom through the crucible of common sense.
For instance, despite the conventional wisdom of the ’50s and ’60s, she was one of the very earliest to challenge the idea that you should eat margarine in preference to butter. She never believed that processed food was a healthier choice. Many of Joann’s strongly held and fiercely defended convictions about the positive health effects of unprocessed grains, fats, and whole milk and cream have been vindicated, and it all started with this book.
The well-known nutritionist provides dietary advice for preventing difficult pregnancies and insuring a healthy existence for children throughout their years of growth
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Home food production & self-sufficiency was Joann Grohman’s lifelong enthusiasm. With a young, hungry family of eight children, she started milking cows by hand and did so until she was almost 90 years old. She simply could not imagine life without a family cow, a remarkable animal that makes grass into nutritious milk and cream that can feed people, pigs, and chickens, as well as provide manure to grow vegetables. When asked if having a cow means feeling stuck on the farm, she countered that a cow supports a beautiful life that can be found in no other way.
This book was important to Mom's evolution of her thinking about cows. Originally, she emphasized the milk cow's importance as a kingpin of farm life (the original title of Keeping a Family Cow was The Cow Economy) and, of course, milk was a kingpin of family health.
After reading this book, she came to see cows as a critical center of the problem of carbon sequestration. The grass is our best way of capturing excess carbon in the atmosphere, but the sequestration process requires that the grass be grazed, fertilized with dung, and trampled. The last several years of her life were spent writing articles to alert people to the concept.
In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises.
Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems-climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity-there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.
Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers from around the world, Schwartz challenges much of the conventional thinking about global warming…
Since childhood, I have wanted to live in the country. Six of my earliest years were spent in the city of Bradford, Yorkshire, and San Francisco, California. Sandwiched between those two periods was a year I barely remember on a chicken farm in Zephyrhills, Florida. The fuzzy reminisces of that period elevated it in my mind to a lovely existence in which I roamed about freely, following my parents as they worked in the garden and produced delicious meals from its bounty. I romanticized living on the land as I grew up. My favorite books in childhood were Little House on the Prairie and The Bobbsey Twins in the Country.
First published in 1972, Gene Logsdon’s first book about farming is a how-to guide for beginning back-to-the-landers. For those who had romantic or idealistic ideas about farming and raising animals, as I did, the author provides practical advice on gardening and homesteading as well as reassurance that life in the country can be rewarding and enjoyable.
I loved this book because it supported my view that living on the land was possible and would be fulfilling, while teaching me some very important skills needed to get as much as possible out of the land I had purchased.
Two Acre Eden is more than your average how-to book. The first in a long line of beloved books by homesteading sage Gene Logsdon, Two Acre Eden is an insightful and light-hearted treatise on gardening, homesteading, and getting the most out of your land.
With a healthy dose of humor and eye toward pragmatism, Logsdon dispenses page after page of unbeatable advice on designing, building, and living off of your very own two-acre Garden of Eden. Inside you'll find practical and creative tips on:
Mulching
Pesticide use
Planting cycles
Urban farming
Pruning
Seed selection
And much more...
Since 1979 the life of soil and plants, and how they link to our own lives and health, has fascinated me. In the 1980s I was a maverick because as an organic market gardener, my work was mostly seen as irrelevant to society, producing food that was expensive and for only a few people. That changed from 1988 when the BBC filmed my garden, and green consciousness developed. Since then I have gone from being zero to hero and especially with regard to soil because since 1982 I've been gardening with the no dig method. My experience allows me to direct you towards these gems, which I'm sure you will find useful and enjoyable.
Howard helped me to understand and appreciate the life in soil. How soil is more than an assemblage of chemical nutrients for plants, which was a predominant view when I started farming.
He wrote: "The agriculturalist must obey Nature's rules,” which was radical in the 1940s! He started as an agricultural chemist but came to distrust synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. He valued and explains the importance of compost and mycorrhizal fungi, and coined a phrase that has become a mantra: ”Feed the soil not the plant”. I value his sincerity which shines throughout his books – they read as well now as when published, because these truths are universal.
The Soil and Health, a classic of organic farming, is an essential introduction to organic gardening and farming.
"The health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible." - Albert Howard.
At the turn of the twentieth century, chemical fertilizers seemed to offer limitless potential in agriculture. However, when British agriculturalist Albert Howard travelled to India as Imperial Economic Botanist to the Government of India, he observed Vedic agriculture as practiced by India peasant farmers, and noted the health benefits to plants, animals and humans from what we now call organic agriculture. Albert Howard, Rudolph Steiner and Lady…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Since 1979 the life of soil and plants, and how they link to our own lives and health, has fascinated me. In the 1980s I was a maverick because as an organic market gardener, my work was mostly seen as irrelevant to society, producing food that was expensive and for only a few people. That changed from 1988 when the BBC filmed my garden, and green consciousness developed. Since then I have gone from being zero to hero and especially with regard to soil because since 1982 I've been gardening with the no dig method. My experience allows me to direct you towards these gems, which I'm sure you will find useful and enjoyable.
Ruth’s wisdom came from a long experience of gardening in Connecticut, where her husband was farming cattle, and he gave any spoiled hay to the vegetable garden. Ruth worked out that mulching with old hay was both feeding her soil (and therefore plants) while also maintaining its structure, with no need for tilling/digging. Ruth was an inspiration to me but I quickly realised that in our damp UK climate, slugs love a hay mulch! This led me to use a compost mulch and work out the best ways to do that.
Can you really have a productive garden without plowing, hoeing, weeding, cultivating, and all the other bothersome rituals that most gardeners suffer through every growing season? "Sure," says Ruth Stout, a prolific author and writer at 80 years young. The reason that Ruth can throw away her spade and hoe and do her gardening from a couch is a year-round mulch covering, 6 to 8 inches thick, that covers her garden like a blanket. Thousands of curious gardeners have visited her Redding, Connecticut garden, including university scientists and horticulture experts. The experts have been dazzled by the technique used by…
In 1999, fresh out of Harvard, I moved to Zendik Farm—a neo-hippie cult with a radical take on sex and relationships. Since I left in 2004, I’ve been composting the experience into a source of fertility. I've explored not only what drew me to Zendik and kept me there but also how groups like Zendik feed on deficiencies in our cultural soil—and how common it is for us humans to get trapped inside stories. Even—especially—if we assume ourselves immune to cultism. That is, I’ve approached my cult experience with sincere curiosity. So have all the authors on this list. That’s why I love them.
Fourteen months after leaving Zendik, still a true believer, I realized that I was not a fucked-up failure—Zendik was one fucked-up place. Then, reading Combatting Cult Mind Control, I saw how Zendik fit the cult pattern. How I'd fallen for yet another tired variation on an all too well-worn scheme.
In this book, Hassan adds to the foundation laid by his first book. Most notably, he lays out ways to approach cult members with curiosity, not judgment. Forget arguing and hole-poking, he says. Focus instead on offering unconditional love and letting them come to their own liberating conclusions at their own pace.
Since 1979 the life of soil and plants, and how they link to our own lives and health, has fascinated me. In the 1980s I was a maverick because as an organic market gardener, my work was mostly seen as irrelevant to society, producing food that was expensive and for only a few people. That changed from 1988 when the BBC filmed my garden, and green consciousness developed. Since then I have gone from being zero to hero and especially with regard to soil because since 1982 I've been gardening with the no dig method. My experience allows me to direct you towards these gems, which I'm sure you will find useful and enjoyable.
I love how Maye thought deeply about nature and this had originally led her to the pioneers of biodynamic gardening in 1920s Austria. Then she became disillusioned with what she felt was too strict of adherence to every word of Rudolf Steiner’s writing. Like me, she wanted to try new approaches. After moving back to the UK in the 1930s, she developed her own methods of organic gardening which centred on making top quality compost, using herbal stimulants which she worked out herself.
She was a true scientist and helped me to understand not to trust “accepted views” which can become authoritarian. Plus I learnt about making great compost, in particular the roof she used to keep rain off her heaps.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
When I was studying plant science in graduate school, I realized that what I really wanted to do was not lab research but to help people understand plants better so they could grow more beautiful and bountiful gardens. To this end, I have written several books, founded the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG), taught horticulture at City College of San Francisco for several decades, and, since 2006, written a column on gardening for the SF Chronicle. My list of books about gardening know-how will painlessly prepare you to grow plants well.
The
author, who was for many years an extension urban horticulturist
and associate professor at Puyallup Research and Extension Center, Washington
State University, does gardeners a great service by taking on common garden
myths about fertilizer, mulch, transplanting, staking, compost tea, watering
and many more potentially confusing topics. In this and her subsequent books,
she skillfully debunks myths with current research and her professional
experience.
Winner of the Best Book Award in the 2009 Garden Writers Association Media Awards
Named an "Outstanding Title" in University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries, 2009
In this introduction to sustainable landscaping practices, Linda Chalker-Scott addresses the most common myths and misconceptions that plague home gardeners and horticultural professionals. Chalker-Scott offers invaluable advice to gardeners gardeners who have wondered:
Are native plants the best choice for sustainable landscaping?
Should you avoid disturbing the root ball when planting?
Are organic products better or safer than synthetic ones?
What is the best way to control weeds-fabric or mulch?
