Rate this book

Living The Good Life: How To Live Sanely And Simply In A Troubled World (1970)

by Helen Nearing(Favorite Author)

4.16 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0805233636 (ISBN13: 9780805233636)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Schocken Books

review 1: I liked it. It was fascinating reading. Lots of good lessons in this book. I really loved reading about the building techniques and the gardening techniques used.The annoying part to me was the sad assumption which is made obvious in the summary that being an 'individualist' is bad and being a 'collectivist' is good. Can't everybody realize that these are two very important and character traits, and that they need not be mutually exclusive. Both are necessary and important to strong vibrant innovative communities.
review 2: This is an interesting, before-its-time account of two individuals, Helen and Scott Nearing, and their experiences while homesteading in rural Vermont from 1932-1952. I call the book forward-thinking for several reasons. The authors were a... morectually Marxists attempting to build an existence for themselves that was independent of the capitalist economics of their country, especially in the wake of the Great Depression when they began their venture. Thus, as intellectuals, they held many opinions that were considered extraordinary by their rural peers. For example, they aligned themselves with the vegan group and abstained from using animal products (which they believed contributed to the violent enslavement of their fellow creatures).The book actually can be summarized neatly into the following points:- Stone houses worked best, collected from the rocky terrain on which they lived. - Composting organic matter and using a greenhouse were the secrets that allowed them to grow most of their own food in an unforgiving climate. (The growing season was only 85 days, and even then frost sometimes killed their crops.)-Eating fresh vegetables/fruits and whole foods granted them exceptional health, and they never saw a doctor those whole 20 years. (Modern readers might be aghast at the idea that Helen could have been dead from cervical or other cancer before she knew she was even sick, but it seems that it worked out alright for them.)-Their diet was fresh fruit for breakfast, cooked grains or soup for lunch, and a salad for dinner. Yeah, I could not have abiding that, but good for them.- They explain that the community in rural Vermont consisted of stubborn individualists, and was thus difficult to bind in any common purpose. The lone exception was when the mail service was threatened to be cut off and all residents grouped together to protest this affront.The book was published in 1954 and then again in 1970, I imagine in light of all of the post-hippie era would be homesteaders who wanted tips. It goes a little too in detail on how to build a stone house (like on, and on, and on...) and not enough on other topics, but it was interesting. less

Download links for: Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World

Advertising