The Last Farm Book List, Part 1
10 essential books for understanding our world & finding a way forward
I'm continuing the holiday listicle theme this week with something I've been wanting to put together for a while now: a Last Farm reading list. This is by no means definitive, but it's a start.
So here are 10 non-fiction books that have shaped my thinking around everything from ecology to politics to architecture to making change and more. While I’ve provided links to buy all of these books online, you can also find them at the library or in a used bookstore.
If you’re looking for my permaculture book recommendations, you can find those here.
The World Without Us
This deeply researched book uses a provocative thought experiment—what would happen if humans disappeared overnight?—to illuminate some stunning realities about our civilization. While it makes for fascinating reading in any number of ways, it most powerfully affected my own thinking by revealing the absurdly unsustainable effort required simply to maintain industrial civilization—and the disasters that would ensue if the wrong people had to take an ill-timed vacation. In doing so, it highlights how incredibly fragile the balance is between life and death in a society that relies on comically flimsy structures to stave off catastrophe. One cannot help but develop a newfound appreciation for resilience and true sustainability after reading this book.
The Carbon Farming Solution
If I told you that we already have all the tools to drawdown a shit load of CO2 while giving everyone on the planet rich material and culinary lives, you'd understandably want a factcheck on that. Well, here ya go. This book is a textbook-level rigorous study of exactly how we can replace industrial agriculture with a permaculture-based system of production that can vastly exceed the efficiency, sustainability, and productivity of fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture. Every chapter is a deep dive into the details of how different aspects of agriculture can move from fragility to resilience, degrading to regenerating, and annual to perennial, all while stabilizing the climate, improving biodiversity, and producing plenty for all.
Envisioning Real Utopias
This book attempts to answer one of the trickiest questions of all: how do we change the world? The author was among the most brilliant and least dogmatic radical thinkers of our time, and while explaining his answer to the all-important how question, he illuminates a variety of absolutely essential points. One of the most important issues discussed is the challenge of managing the transition between capitalism and socialism: what Wright calls "the transition trough problem." This is one of those practical issues that is so historically determinative of success, it must be central to any viable program for change. While I don't agree with Wright on everything, his analysis of capitalism and his critique of Marxism are essential reading, as are his insights into the process of making change. While the book is pretty accessibly written, it is an academic text, so if you prefer a punchier and even more accessible version, the author's “How To Be An Anticapitalist in the 21st Century” is basically a summary version of this book.