The Peaceful Nursery: Preparing a Home for Your Baby with Feng Shui
Alison Forbes and Laura Forbes Carlin
Delta

Home and lifestyle experts Laura Forbes Carlin and Alison Forbes show you how to apply the best principles of home decorating, Feng Shui, and healthy living (as well as their own parenting experience!) to create a warm and welcoming environment for your new baby.

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The Complete Organic Pregnancy
Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissu
HarperCollins

Deirdre Dolan and Alexandra Zissu address how you can minimize your exposure to the invisible toxins that surround us—in everything from food, cleaning products, and cosmetics to furniture, rugs, air, and water. Step by step, they tell you where dangerous chemicals are lurking, why it's so important to avoid them when pregnant, and what you can do before, during, and after your pregnancy to protect your child.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
J. K. Rowling
Raincoast Books

Consider this: Canada's Harry Potter is the only forest-friendly Harry Potter in the world. Out of 55 publishers globally, Raincoast Books is the only one to print Harry Potter on 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper, processed without chlorine. Raincoast Books used that paper for the initial print run of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix —930,000 copies. It saved an estimated 39,320 trees, 17 million gallons of water and 1, 885 pounds of solid waste, not to mention electricity and greenhouse gases.

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The Day the Trash Came Out to Play
David M. Beadle, illustrated by Laurie A. Faust
Ezra's Earth Publishing

When young Robin throws a candy wrapper on the street of his beautiful town, he unintentionally starts an event of landfill proportions. It's not long before the town becomes overrun by mischievous, high-spirited litter. Can Robin fix the situation before everything is buried under a pile of unruly, stinking trash?

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Come Back, Salmon: How a Group of Dedicated Kids Adopted Pigeon Creek and Brought It Back to Life
Molly Cone and Sidnee Wainwright
Sierra Club Books for Children

This book tells the story of Jackson Elementary School, a thousand baby salmon and poor little Pigeon Creek. With good photos and engaging writing, you're soon rooting for all three and before it's over, you'll want to adopt a stream of your own.

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Ancient Ones: The World of Old-Growth Douglas Fir
Barbara Bash
Sierra Club Books for Children

With gentle description and plentiful paint, Bash introduces children to the wonderful world of an old-growth forest.

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Just a Dream
Chris Van Allsburg
Houghton Mifflin

A surrealistic masterpiece about the environment. Young Walter couldn't care less about litter or recycling until a terrifying nightmare about the future—with landfills buying neighborhoods—terrifies him into taking care of the earth.

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Where Once There Was a Wood
Denise Fleming
Henry Holt & Company

Perhaps the most gorgeous children's book around. Fleming's text and illustrations recall a wood, meadow, creek, plus their inhabitants—and the housing development that replaced them all.

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Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?
Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carl
Henry Holt & Company

The text reads like a nursery rhyme about ten different animals. All ten are, or have been, endangered. Toddlers may miss the point, but they will enjoy looking at the lush colors and beautiful creatures.

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Raising Kids Who Will Make a Difference
by SUSAN V. VOGT
Loyola Press

Tips, stories, and advice from parents and youth to guide your efforts to raise children who have the knowledge, capacities and courage to act, in small and big ways, to make the world a better place.

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Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet Guide to Natural Baby Care
by MINDY PENNYBACKER and AISHA IKRAMUDDIN
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Green Guide editor Mindy Pennybacker and former Green Guide research editor Aisha Ikramuddin have assembled a thorough, practical, and accessible guide to natural parenting: tips for reducing exposure to toxins, safe practices, resources, and healthy products. A supportive and informative guide to pregnancy, the green baby home, and natural baby care.

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Greening School Grounds: Creating Habitats for Learning
Tim Grant and Gail Littlejohn
New Society Publishers

Connecting school kids with nature has been shown to improve behavior, attendance, and, yes, even test scores, as kids engage in interdisciplinary explorations of the real world that develop skills useful in real life. Greening School Grounds provides a thorough, practical, and creative guide to help schools connect kids with food and nature, right on their campus.

The Rough Guide to Climate Change
Robert Henson
Rough Guides

A quick reference to global warming science, symptoms and survival strategies.

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On the Clean Road Again: Biodiesel and the Future of the Family Farm
Willie Nelson
Fulcrum Publishing

Country music legend Willie Nelson confronts one of the most significant problems facing America today: dependency on foreign oil as a source of energy.

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Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Bill McKibben
Time Books

A stimulating philosophical approach to the global problems on the table—climate change, poverty, loss of communities, mental health—McKibben's book centers on the idea that these problems all stem from an out-of-control quest for more in order to make our lives, our cities, our bank accounts, better. (To read the full review, click here).

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This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future
John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry
PublicAffairs

In their latest book, John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry profile the courageous people who've fought against environmental decline for the past 40 years. Read the full review.

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From the Bottom Up: One Man's Crusade to Clean America's Rivers
Chad Pregracke
National Geographic Society

What might sound like work release from prison to others is Pregracke’s life’s work—cleaning up the Mississippi and other riverways around the country one mile at a time. In this charming memoir, Pregracke and Barrow detail how this calling rose out of a childhood in East Moline, Illinois with the Mississippi literally in his backyard. Read the full review.

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True Green
Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin
National Geographic Society

True Green explores six key areas where small changes can make a big difference: In the Home; In the Garden; At Work; Shopping; Travel; and In the Community. Dozens of illustrated spreads provide positive, practical, simple-to-implement tips and a summary of their environmental contribution; in addition, a reference guide to useful websites offers access to priceless additional information, global and local alike.

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A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines: The Growing Threat of Species Invasions
Yvonne Baskin
Island Press

Zebra mussels, water hyacinth, cheatgrass and song-bird eating snakes are wreaking havoc around the world. Science writer, Yvonne Baskin takes us on a tour of the planet's waterways, grasslands, forests and gardens to illustrate how we are ignoring the threat of invasive alien species and our seemingly harmless actions disrupt biodiversity.

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World Agriculture and the Environment
Jason Clay
Island Press

A unique assessment of agricultural industry and the environmental problems it causes, followed by suggestions for increasing efficiency and reducing natural damage. Offers comparative information on twenty of the world's major crops, including coffee, rubber, tea, sorgum, rice and beef.

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Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness
David Helvarg
Sierra Club Books

A panoramic, highly readable report on the state of America's coastlines and the ocean wilderness off our shores, by a veteran environmental journalist. Gives the inside scoop on issues that have become major talking points for Americans since the Katrina disaster.

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Stop Global Warming: The Solution Is You!
Laurie David
Fulcrum Publishing

Stop Global Warming turns headlines into action, providing testimony of leading environmental activist Laurie David's own grassroots efforts to sound the alarm for the American people and showing how and why others (particularly young people) must get involved in this most pressing issue. Read the full review.

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An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore
Rodale Press

An Inconvenient Truth — Gore's groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance — is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world.

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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond
Penguin Books

Diamond crafts a careful and thorough account of the environmental and cultural fragility of civilizations, from present-day Montana to the toppled statues of Easter Island. Collapse is both a fascinating study of humanity's ecological relationships and a cautionary tale of our increasingly overtaxed resources.

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Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
Elizabeth Kolbert
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet. Read the full review.

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50 Ways To Save the Ocean
David Helvarg
Inner Ocean Publishing

Learn to be a seaweed rebel, even if the nearest ocean is a thousand miles away. Helvarg's illuminating guide offers 50 daily choices that will help save our suffering seas.

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The North Pole Was Here
Andrew C. Revkin
Kingfisher

Early in this engaging book is a photograph of Andrew Revkin at his base camp near the North Pole, hair matted, casting a crazed smile over his shoulder as he types a story into his laptop. To read the full review click here.

The War Against the Greens: The “Wise Use” Movement, the New Right, and The Browning of America
David Helvarg
Johnson Books

Oh, what a difference a decade makes, as David Helvarg reminds us in his revised, updated edition of The War Against the Greens, first published in 1994. During the Clinton years, who would have foreseen that the U.S. would reject the Kyoto Accord and steadily erode restrictions on power plant emissions and a ban on logging in undeveloped national forests? (To read more of Mindy Pennybacker's review, click here.

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What Matters Most: How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business Is Listening
Jeffrey Hollender and Stephen Fenichell
Basic Books

Can business really make the world a better place? Hollender and Fenichell follow the stories of companies willing to try—and detail the pitfalls and accomplishments on the path to social and environmental responsibility. To read P. W. McRandle's interview with Jeffrey Hollender, click here.

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Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth
Lester Brown
W. W. Norton

Like the Sumerian and Mayan civilizations, our economy is fast destroying its environmental support systems, threatening future generations. In Eco-Economy Lester shows what an environmentally sustainable economy would look like, and invites readers to help create it. To read Mindy Pennybacker's interview with Lester Brown, click here.

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Blue Frontier: Saving America's Living Seas
David Helvarg
Henry Holt & Co.

With 90 percent of all large ocean fish lost to industrial fishing, coal reefs dying, and fish farms polluting coastlines, the world's oceans are under threat as never before. In this impassioned work, David Helvarg travels America to offer an upclose view of the state of our fisheries and what the public can do to preserve them.

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Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Julieted B. Schor and Betsy Taylor
Beacon Press

With essays ranging from the greening of industrial design to the ethics of fashion, this anthology by 16 journalists envisions sustainable development leading a complete transformation of commerce.

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Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth
by DAVID BOLLIER
Routledge

David Bollier calls our attention to an ominous and growing trend: the increasing privatization and abuse of dozens of resources that we collectively own. More and more of these resources -- public lands and waters, the air waves, our cultural and genetic heritage -- are being claimed as private property and diminished for the short-term benefit of a few. Bollier provides theory, reporting, and strategies to protect our life-sustaining common assets.

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Alternatives to Globalization: A Better World is Possible
by THE INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON GLOBALIZATION, eds.
Berrett-Koehler Publishers

The latest theory, ideas, and solutions from the International Forum on Globalization, to inform your thinking and inspire local alternatives to an unjust, unhealthy corporate global economy.

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The Farm as Natural Habitat
by DANA L. JACKSON and LAURA L. JACKSON, eds.
Island Press

Rejecting the idea that rural lands must be sacrificial industrial zones, this mother-daughter team offer data and examples to inspire and guide the restoration of biodiversity on our farms.

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Trust Us, We're Experts!
by SHELDON RAMPTON and JOHN STAUBER
Jeremy P. Tarcher

A rigorously-researched series of case studies that reveal how corporate money shapes policy and public opinion through bogus experts, suppressed studies, doctored data, and manufactured facts.

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The Hydrogen Economy
by JEREMY RIFKIN
Penguin Putnam

Famed futurist Jeremy Rifkin provides the plan for willfully weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and turning to renewable hydrogen for energy. The book details why we need to create a worldwide "energy" web of small-scale fuel cells, to foster democracy, health, and sustainability.

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Bringing the Local Economy Home
by HELENA NORBERG-HODGE
Kumarian Press

A wide-ranging yet concise primer on why we need to create local alternatives to global agribusiness, and the benefits this would bring to farmers, families and the earth. Complete with resources and strategies for every community.

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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by MALCOLM GLADWELL
Back Bay Books

When does a small innovation snowball into a major trend? Or an idea spread like wildfire? In this widely acclaimed bestseller, Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker, introduces us to the characters – the mavens, connectors, salespeople and others – who by their very nature, and whether they realize it or not, set change in motion.

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How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table
Russ Parsons
Houghton Mifflin Company

How to Pick a Peach is thoughtfully organized and carefully researched, with each chapter focusing on an individual crop or group of crops and detailing its (or their) social and historical background. Particularly helpful for the amateur and professional alike are the chapter conclusions that explain how to choose, store and prepare produce and offer "One Simple Dish." Read the full review.

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Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes and Cultural Diversity
Gary Paul Nabhan
Island Press

Chili peppers make your ears burn? Wine make your face flush? One in three humans has a food sensitivity. Award-winning natural historian Gary Nabhan takes us around the world to show how diets, ethnicity and genetics play a major role in our health and cultural diversity, and how the loss of traditional foods bears trajic consequences on our well-being.

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What to Eat
Marion Nestle
North Point Press

A witty, yet comprehensive, section by section walk through the supermarket that debunks sales hype and heath claims, answering questions about organic food, hormones, pesticides, carbohydrates, omega-3s, trans fats, supplements, dieting and obesity.

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The Ethical Gourmet: How To Enjoy Great Food That is Humanely Raised, Sustainable, Nonendangered and That Replenishes the Earth
Jay Weinstein
Broadway Books

Combine the knowledge gleaned from Weinstein's articulate arguments with some fantastic new recipes and cooking techniques to get the most out of environmentally conscious foods. Read the full review.

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Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection
Jessica Prentice
Chelsea Green Publishing Company

The book follows the 13 lunar cycles of an agrarian year, and includes recipes for every season. Read the full review.

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Salt: A World History
Mark Kurlansky
Penguin Books

Salt has flavored more than just the average family dinner. It has influenced cultures, started wars and filled bank accounts.

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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan
Penguin Press

Pointing out that most industrial foods eaten by Americans derive from corn, Pollan provides a natural history of meals from factory farms, organic farms and hunting and gathering.

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Green Living, the E.Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth
E. Magazine
Plume

The caring consumers (and who isn't?) on your list will be delighted to receive Green Living, a comprehensive-and comprehensible- primer to a healthy, humane and eco-friendly lifestyle from the editors and writers of E, the environmental magazine that's been leading a sustainable existence since 1990. To read the full review click here.

Fields of Plenty
Michael Ableman
Chronicle Books

This genre-defying sumptuously photographed travelogue/recipe book/memoir looks like a coffee-table tome, but makes for a fascinating exploration of America seen through the eyes of dedicated farmers. Michael Ableman knows his farms: Founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, featured on NPR's All Things Considered and subject of the PBS documentary Beyond Organic, he's no stranger to traveling far and wide to learn about how people work the earth. To read the full review click here

French Women Don't Get Fat
Mireille Guiliano
Alfred A. Knopf

I've been to Paris and seen the statistics; the title is correct. While 22% of Americans are obese, only 7% of French people are. So what's the difference between them and us? A significant part of her theory is that French women don't deny themselves. If they want chocolate, they have a bit. If a croissant seems like just the thing, they enjoy it. But she goes to pains to say that if she's in the mood for chocolate, she eats the most delicious chocolate she can find, but only eats a small amount. That way she feels satisfied and happy, but hasn't eaten too many calories. And you don't have to be French to try that out. —Amy Topel

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Eat Here: Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket
Brian Halweil
W. W. Norton & Company

Last December, outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, memorably warned America, "For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." Maybe he's just not looking at the right culprits. As Brian Halweil's Eat Here points out, corporate conglomeration has concentrated control of our food supply in the hands of six or seven companies, driving farmers off the land worldwide. To read the full review click here

Fresh Choices: More Than 100 Easy Recipes for Pure Food When You Can't Buy 100% Organic
Rochelle Davis
Rodale Books

Buying certified organic foods is your best bet, but everyone knows they can be either expensive or unavailable at times. With its hundred plus recipes, Fresh Choices creates green, healthy options for practical use.

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Healthy Highways: The Road Guide to Healthy Eating
Nikki and David Goldbeck
Ceres Press

With their new and unique travel guide from food gurus Nikki & David Goldbeck, travelers are no longer limited to "gas and go" road stops, but instead can make informed choices about where to eat, restock their coolers or pick up a healthy snack. By following the book's maps and going from listing to listing, travelers can "construct their own healthy food chain." Healthy Highways, features more than 1,900 health-oriented eateries and natural food stores in all 50 states. What makes it unique is that every listing is keyed to state maps and also include local directions from the nearest highway or main road. Thus, travelers can anticipate upcoming locations and plan their stops without concern for getting lost.

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The Slow Food Guide to New York City: Restaurants, Markets, Bars
Patrick Martins and Ben Watson
Chelsea Green

Tourist as well as local dollars can provide integral support, and for those who visit or live in New York, THE SLOW FOOD GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY RESTAURANTS, MARKETS, BARS, edited by Patrick Martins, director of Slow Food U.S.A. and Ben Watson, can fit in a deep coat pocket, serving as an indispensable ally in the quest for sustainable delights. To read the full review click here.

Slow Food: The Case for Taste
Carlo Petrini
Columbia University

This year, founder Carlo Petrini has authored SLOW FOOD: THE CASE FOR TASTE (Columbia University Press, $24.95), a digestible if professorial digression on the movement's philosophy in a small, beautiful volume that feels good in the hand. From its birthplace, the humble Piedmontese village of Bra, near the famous wine and truffle region of Barolo, Slow Food has gone globally local, as it were, with 75,000 members worldwide and 10,000 in the U.S. To read the full review click here.

Everyday Greens: Home Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant
Annie Somerville
Scribner, 2003

Whetting the appetite with recipes for savory bites infused with international flavors, Everyday Greens is is an ode to fresh ingredients, traditional techniques and simply great food. Annie Somerville, Greens executive chef since 1985, provides over 250 of Green's most popular dishes, from casual lunches to elegant dinners, each fine-tuned for the home cook in straight-forward recipes for the way we live.

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The Newman's Own Organics Guide to the Good Life: Simple Measures That Benefit You and the Place You Live
Nell Newman with Joseph D'Agnese
Villard Publisher

Packed with sage, practical advice on how to live lighter and enjoy it, The Newman's Own Organics Guide to a Good Life answers pretty much anything you ever wanted to know—from what to feed your dog to what phone company to use. Written by a great story teller, this book doesn't ask for perfection but focuses on those things within our reach that if we change, as the author proves, can make a real difference to our health and the environment. To read The Green Guide's interview with Nell Newman, click here.

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Sunlight Cafe: Breakfast Served All Day
by MOLLIE KATZEN
Hyperion Books

A massive, multi-cultural resource for vegetarian breakfasts, which features over 350 recipes, cooking tips, and an inclusive welcoming of vegetarian staples to the breakfast table.

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The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life and Spirit
by ANDREW WEIL and ROSIE DALEY
Alfred A. Knopf

The collaboration of noted health advisor Andrew Weil and cook Rosie Daley offers variety, health and nutritional information, family cooking tips, shopping guides, shortcuts, and two synergistic perspectives on many savory dishes.

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Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet
by FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ and ANNA LAPPÉ
Jeremy P. Tarcher

Travel the world and visit US farms, restaurants, and schools with long-time food activist Frances Moore Lappe and her daughter Anna, and see the courage, vision, and determination that are creating healthy, more sustainable food systems.

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A Cafecito Story
by JULIA ALVAREZ
Chelsea Green Publishing Company

With lyric simplicity, A Cafecito Story tells the complex tale of the popular beverage – coffee – and how it bridges nations and unites people in trade, in words, in birds, and in love. National Book Award finalist Julia Alvarez brings her novelistic gifts and her experience as an organic coffee grower together to inform and entertain. The book also offers delightful woodcuts by famed Dominican artist, Belkis Ramirez.

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The Anatomy of a Dish
by DIANE FORLEY with CATHERINE YOUNG
Artisan Books

This beautifully illustrated and chart-filled cookbook is a botanical guide, a journey through the culinary possibilities of each season, and a recipe book from Diane Forley, esteemed chef-proprietor of New York’s Verbena, whose food The New York Times described as "plain cooking raised to new heights."

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The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
Eugene Linden
Simon & Schuster

The Winds of Change places climate change, global warming and the resulting instability in historical context and sounds an urgent warning for the future. Read the full review.

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Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe & Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning
Jeffrey Hollender and Geoff Davis

An in-depth resource for any consumer looking to limit dangerous chemicals in the home. To read the full review click here.

Nurture Nature, Nurture Health
Dr. Mitchell Gaynor
Barbed Wire Publishing

As health crises continue to escalate in this country, one of America's most renowned oncologists looks at the rising epidemics - breast cancer, asthma, learning disabilities, autism - to expose the environment’s role in contributing to many of the diseases that are devastating people of all ages.

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Dr. Gaynor's Cancer Prevention Program
Dr. Mitchell Gaynor
Kensington Publishing Corporation

An oncologist and a pharmacist show how to reduce the risk of getting cancer with a powerful, easy-to-follow program that combines the best of nutritional science and latest medical research.

[buy it now]

Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer
Dr. Harvey Karp
Bantam Books

Renowned pediatrician Karp synthesizes years of practical experience and fascinating research into a series of easy-to-do, easy-to-remember techniques that help parents find baby's "off switch" and transform that tiny crying newborn into "The Happiest Baby on the Block."

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When Smoke Ran Like Water
by DEVRA DAVIS
Basic Books

An insider's history of pollution-generated public health crises and the heroes who struggled against ignorance and industry to document and to end them. To read the full review and interview with Devra Davis, click here.

[buy it now]

Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood
by SANDRA STEINGRABER
Perseus Publishing

A pregnant ecologist recounts the month-by-month development of her child, detailing the many man-made obstacles to health that fetuses encounter on their journey to birth. Steingraber reminds us that the water of the womb is the water of the world – a precious resource that our love of children must keep safe.

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Raising Children in a Toxic World, 101 Smart Solutions for Every Family
by PHILIP LANDRIGAN, HERBERT NEEDLEMAN, and MARY LANDRIGAN
Rodale Press

Who could provide a better guide than pediatricians and experts in children’s environmental health to how to navigate the toxic risks to health that permeate our children’s world? Drs. Phillip Landrigan and Herbert Needleman and public health educator Mary Landrigan provide the perfect compendium packed with practical solutions for the caring parent – all in a slim portable paperback. To read Mindy Pennybacker's review of Raising Healthy Children in a Toxic World, click here.

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This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader
by JOAN DYE GUSSOW
Chelsea Green Publishing Company

This Organic Life is at once a memoir, cookbook, garden guide and passionate, knowledgeable plea for a local, sustainable food system. Drawing on her extensive knowledge and experience, retired Columbia University nutrition professor Joan Dye Gussow recounts her efforts to establish a backyard organic garden and commit to a seasonal diet, and reflects upon the personal, spiritual, and global importance of re-establishing the regional in the food we eat. To read Joan Gussow's interview with Barbara Kinsolver, click here.

[buy it now]

Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living
Annie Berthold Bond
Three Rivers Press (CA)

A compendium of practical information--recipes, tips, and guidelines--for building a simple, comfortable, healthy, environmentally safer lifestyle.

[buy it now]

Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time
David R. Johnston and Kim Master
New Society Publishers

Though it's not a how-to manual, Green Remodeling is an in-depth guide on building construction, exposing energy suckers like antiquated refrigerators and products like vinyl siding, then divulging a host of healthy alternatives. Read the full review.

[buy it now]

How to Grow Fresh Air
B.C. Wolverton
Penguin Books

In research designed to create a breathable environment for a NASA lunar habitat, noted scientist Dr. B. C. Wolverton discovered that houseplants are the best filters of common pollutants such as ammonia, formaldehyde, and benzene. In this full-color, easy-to-follow guide, Dr. Wolverton shows you how to grow and nurture 50 plants as accessible and trouble-free as the tulip and the Boston fern. He also rates each plant for its effectiveness in removing various pollutants, and its ease of growth and maintenance.

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Green Design
edited by Buzz Poole
Mark Batty Publisher

This is not a book about high-concept green prototypes, such as hydrogen-powered cars. The authors focus on everyday goods, uniting products as disparate as LEGO blocks, American Apparel T-shirts and recycled paper under a common banner. Read the full review.

[buy it now]

Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe & Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning
Jeffrey Hollender and Geoff Davis

An in-depth resource for any consumer looking to limit dangerous chemicals in the home. To read the full review click here.

The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty
Robyn Griggs Lawrence
Clarkson Potter

For me, Real Simple and Vogue are fantasy reads: I'm never going to achieve either epitome of chic. But suddenly, thanks to Robyn Griggs Lawrence's captivating The Wabi-Sabi House, I've actually started letting go of clutter. To read the full review click here.

Green Living, the E.Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on the Earth
E. Magazine
Plume

The caring consumers (and who isn't?) on your list will be delighted to receive Green Living, a comprehensive-and comprehensible- primer to a healthy, humane and eco-friendly lifestyle from the editors and writers of E, the environmental magazine that's been leading a sustainable existence since 1990. To read the full review click here.

Home Enlightenment: Practical, Earth-Friendly Advice for Creating a Nurturing, Healthy and Toxin-Free Home and Lifestyle
Annie Berthold-Bond
Rodale Books

Lots of people these days are looking to lead healthier lifestyles. They exercise, eat right, and then head to the store where they buy cleaners full of harmful chemicals, furniture that pollutes the indoor air of their homes and clothes made from pesticide-laden fabrics.To read the full review click here.

The Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book
Margaret Klein Wilson
Countryman Press

The knitters on your list will adore organic or greenspun (no petrochemicals in processing) wool from Vermont's Green Mountain Spinnery (www.spinnery.com). For original patterns and the story of how land was conserved for traditional sheep farms, give The Green Mountain Spinnery Knitting Book by Margaret Klein Wilson (2003, The Countryman Press).

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A Handmade Life
Wm. S. Coperthwaite
Chelsea Green Publishing

Utopian at a time when radicals and moderates alike have landfilled the idea, Bill Coperthwaite unifies back-to-the-land and arts-and-crafts movements with community activism in what he calls "social design." To read the full review click here.

[buy it now]

A Consumer's Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients
Ruth Winters
Beaverton

An invaluable compendium of the often arcane chemical ingredients in cosmetics, with health information to steer you clear of toxic substances.

[buy it now]

Rainforest Home Remedies: The Maya Way to Heal Your Body & Replenish Your Soul
Rosita Arvigo and Nadine Epstein
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001

Find alternatives to chemical anti-depressants and painkillers in your spice rack. In Rainforest Home remedies, Authors Arvigo and Epstein provide a practical guide to healthy living and traditional herbal wisdom, blended with an insightful view of common modern ailments.

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Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest
Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D.
Penquin Books, 1993

In search of cures for today's most devastating diseases, Plotkin apprentices himself to the wise men of the Amazonian rainforest who know the power of the plants. An anthropological adventure story, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice also vividly clarifies what destruction of the region's plant species may ultimately cost humanity.

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Atomic Farmgirl: Growing Up Right in the Wrong Place
Teri Hein
Mariner books

Teri Hein grew up up on a farm in eastern Washington state in the 1950s just at the time the new Hanford Nuclear Reservation started to poison the land. Both coming-of-age story and environmental cautionary tale, Atomic Farmgirl is a memoir of a family's suffering and the loss of our heartland.

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Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
Greg Critser
Houghton Mifflin

With self-effacing humor as well as insight, Greg Critser analyzes the obesity epedimic which has made 60% of Americans overweight. Fast food franchises with their supersized drinks and "meals" are the clear culprits as Critser demonstrates how they've trained us to take in an extra 200 calories daily over the last twenty years.

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Fatal Deception: The Untold Story of Asbestos
Michael Bowker
Rodale Press

Moving from Libby, Montana to Ground Zero, investigative journalist Michael Bowker tracks the continued use of asbestos in a myriad of products and the harm it wreaks on communities large and small.

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Five Past Midnight in Bhopal
by DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE and JAVIER MORO
Warner Books

A thorough investigation of Bhopal's toxic slaughter, which ranges from the boardroam decisions which set the stage for this disaster to the real people whose lives were ruined.

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The Safe Shopper's Bible: A Consumer's Guide to Nontoxic Household Products, Cosmetics, and Food
by DAVID STEINMAN & SAMUEL S. EPSTEIN, M.D.
MacMillan Publishing Company

An encyclopedic reference on problematic consumer products and safer alternatives. The Safe Shopper's Bible offers an overview of the woeful state of consumer information and detailed, rigorously researched information on a wide range of products, problems and solutions -- articles, charts, resources, directories,and even organizations working to take the risks out of shopping.

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Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things
by JOHN C. RYAN and ALAN THEIN DURNING
Northwest Environment Watch

Everything you needed to know about some harmless-seeming everyday items found in our homes: coffee, newspapers, clothes, fast food, and cars. The book's engaging yet chilling journeys through the life-cycle of many mainstays of modern life will open your eyes and may change your choices. Buy from NEW website.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
by ERIC SCHLOSSER
HarperCollins (Perennial)

In Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, provides a painfully accurate, what’s-going-on-behind-the-counter view of fast food -- the (increasingly clogged) heart of the American food system. Surprisingly filled with hope for a more humane and safe food system, Fast Food Nation bears a disturbingly similarity to Upton Sinclair’s 1906The Jungle: nightmare working conditions and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, schools and homes. The insidious new twist Schlosser exposes: How the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young" leaving them prone to obesity and disease.

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Drop Dead Gorgeous: Protecting Yourself from the Hidden Dangers of Cosmetics
by KIM ERICKSON
Contemporary Books Inc

Personal care products – shampoos, fragrances, nail polishes, etc -- can contain a veritable witches' brew of chemicals -- most untested, many hazardous and few if any listed on the label. Author Kim Erickson takes a piercing look beneath the veil at the makeup of modern cosmetics and the loop-hole riddled regulations that fail to ensure public safety. Thankfully, beauty can be found in a less-lethal bottle and Erickson offers many resources and recipes by which to find it.

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One Great Game: Two Teams, Two Dreams, in the First Ever National Championship High School Football Game
Don Wallace
Atria Books

For more than a century, no Number 1 and Number 2 high schoolfootball team had ever met -- until October 6, 2001. This is the story of two teams -- Concord De La Salle, a private Catholic school in an upscale Northern California suburb, and Long Beach Poly, a proud public institution from a blue-collar SoCal seaport -- striving to achieve the same goal: the all-American dream.

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The Trudeau Vector
Juris Jurjevics
Viking Books

As the international team of scientists at the spectacular Trudeau Research Center prepares for six months of unrelenting Arctic winter, three of their colleagues are found dead, their pupils missing and their bodies contorted in ghastly, unnatural positions. An American epidemiologist, the talented and unconventional Dr. Jessica Hanley, is summoned to investigate the medical riddle posed by these grisly deaths.To read the full review click here.

Drop City
T. C. Boyle
Viking

T. C. Boyle’s delightfully dark tale about the age of Aquarius opens in 1970 in a rural California hippie commune, founded by a bearded idealist who welcomes one and all. To read the full review click here

All Over Creation
Ruth Ozeki
Viking

It's one thing to write a novel of ideas—bioengineered food, in this case—and quite another to have it zing to life, as Ruth Ozeki's All Over Creation does. The charm that enlivens this novel about food politics is its believable, down-to-earth people. To read the full review click here.

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A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies
John Murray
HarperCollins

India and its diaspora, along with butterflies, figure largely in John Murray's tales. In the title story, Maya, a part-Indian doctor in her mid-thirties, is devastated by a miscarriage but attempts to hide it from the unnamed narrator, her much older husband, who has never shared her desire for a child. To read the full review click here.

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London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25
Iain Sinclair
Granta

Inveterate foot-slogger and mad poet, Iain Sinclair paces the ring road around London during the height of the foot-and-mouth epidemic to document the uneasy borderland, home to asylum gardens and toxic dumping grounds, between city and country. Through this backdrop of stark roadscapes and forgotten locales, he presents an unexpected social history of London's environment that is both thrilling and wildly idiosyncratic.

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Feed
M. T. Anderson
Candlewick Press

Set in a dystopian future in which the populace is neurally connected to a consumerist world wide web, M. T. Anderson’s new young adult novel, nominated for the National Book Award last fall, is a dark, hilarious, and ultimately tragic story of young people in a artificial landscape sliding headlong towards environmental catastrophe.

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Gain
by RICHARD POWERS
St. Martin's Press

With deft symbolism and engaging prose, this novel sheds light on the origins and flaws of modern consumer society, as it tells the tale of a corporation, a family and an increasingly-imperiled democracy.

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The Octopus and the Orangutan
by EUGENE LINDEN
Plume

Eugene Linden, author of The Parrot’s Lament, offers a new collection of real-life anecdotes that demonstrate the surprising wit and intelligence of animals. From the beloved pets we think we know to remarkable creatures in the wild, the stories of football-playing penguins and wily octopuses promise to inform, amaze, and touch us all. To read Mindy Pennybacker's interview with Eugene Linden, click here.

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Small Wonder: Essays
by BARBARA KINGSOLVER
HarperCollins Publishers

A collection of essays from Poisonwood Bible author Barbara Kingsolver, many of which were written in response to the events of September 11th. Ranging from what Kingsolver ate on a trip to Japan, to wonder over a news story about a she-bear who suckled a lost child, to how it feels to be an idealist, the essays reveal one caring, articulate person’s attempt to respond with decency, humanity, and love to the challenges she finds in her modern American life. To read Joan Gussow's interview with Barbara Kinsolver, click here.

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Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze
Lis Harris
Houghton Mifflin

A companion book to Bronx Ecology (below), Tilting at Mills by New Yorker writer Lis Harris focuses on the political drama surrounding the Bronx Community Paper Corporation, taking readers from the project's idealistic inception to the back room deal-making which led to its bitter demise.

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Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism
Allen Hershkowitz, Maya Lin
Island Press

When Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, set out to develop a paper recycling plant in the Bronx that would serve as a model for environmental and community concerns, he had no idea of the trials ahead. This book details the facility’s plans (with designs by Maya Lin), its goals, and the process which ended in the project’s failure. Undaunted, Hershokowitz puts forward the project as a model for future environmentally conscious development.

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Cradle to Cradle
by WILLIAM McDONOUGH & MICHAEL BRAUNGART
North Point Press

McDonough and Braungart, the famed architect and chemist team, present a strategy for eliminating the mountains of waste industrial society produces: design man-made material cycles that mimic nature, with waste entirely consumable again as "food" for the next production cycle. The book itself is a case in point, composed of entirely recyclable man-made materials.

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