apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I didn't find the book high on new content or inspiration. I've read most of the ideas before. Perhaps I read some of his essays in the Atlantic previously.

The year of eating covered the same territory as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

The Durable Future tries so hard to leave us with optimism for the future. But how can he discuss Bangladesh without saying anything about salt water incursion into fresh water wells due to global sea level rise? Irrigating from contaminated wells poisons the soil with salts. Why didn't he mention this? Bangladesh is in real danger.

The most interesting part of the book to me was the first chapter, After Growth. I wished he expounded more about how we grew richer only by working more hours and using the earth unsustainably.

I read the book (checked out from the library, natch) but am struggling to come up with a cohesive comment. I struggled through it a bit, and it left me feeling a bit pensive. Our family has been taking a closer look at our finances lately, so it did reinforce the idea for me that more is not necessarily better. I also thought the book came alive when it described specific efforts (the small towns' alternate monetary systems, various alternate communities) but that overall the book didn't grab me as I expected. Michael Pollan's books, more sharply focussed on food, are much more inspiring/incisive in their specificity.

I'm with smilla653. The book was vaguely interesting, but would've been better at a denser article rather than a somewhat repetitive book. There really wasn't anything terribly inspiring about it, but overall the idea that we should go local and look to our own community for answers is a nice one.