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Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked--how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time. Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green. This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America. In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation’s greatest natural resources. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future. .
Price: $17.80
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The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
The Woman Warrior is a pungent, bitter, but beautifully written memoir of growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California Maxine Hong Kingston (China Men) distills the dire lessons of her mother's mesmerizing "talk-story" tales of a China where girls are worthless, tradition is exalted and only a strong, wily woman can scratch her way upward. The author's America is a landscape of confounding white "ghosts"--the policeman ghost, the social worker ghost--with equally rigid, but very different rules. Like the woman warrior of the title, Kingston carries the crimes against her family carved into her back by her parents in testimony to and defiance of the pain..
Price: $6.49
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Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century
Alcohol Can Be a Gas! is the only comprehensive book ever written on alcohol fuel production and use for home and farm. Until now, it has been very difficult for farmers, contractors, alternative energy aficionados, those concerned about Peak Oil, and small-scale entrepreneurs to obtain good, accurate information on producing alcohol, or on converting vehicles to run on alcohol fuel. And with all the conflicting news stories about ethanol, the public finds it difficult to sort fact from fiction. This text, which has been reviewed by scientists around the world, is the definitive reference work on alcohol fuel. Alcohol Can Be A Gas! contains 640 8-1/2 by 11 pages, with 514 charts, photos, and illustrations to reinforce the information-dense text. The book is geared for the nonscientific reader, but its 473 endnotes provide the technical foundation behind the accessible prose. A 700-word glossary and a 6300-entry index extend the book's usefulness. This book is the distilled essence of the most pertinent information ever assembled in one place on alcohol fuel, the technology that can help us finally become producers of almost limitless energy, instead of extractors of finite resources. How we produce our energy from here on out will determine how we govern ourselves and how we relate to nature and the environment; it will also create a sea change in where wealth concentrates. It will determine if the future is ruled by a small number of armed dictatorships backed by military and industrial interests (a cabal author David Blume likes to refer to as MegaOilron or the Oilygarchy), or if energy, and therefore power, is held by a diffusion of democratic entities, based on their ingenuity and ability to gather a portion of their daily solar income. As Blume writes in the Introduction to Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: "Various prospective publishers argued that putting all of this material into one large volume might scare off readers who just want a recipe book of how to make alcohol. They said, 'All this history and politics is fascinating, but aren't you afraid that including it in your how-to book would scare away some buyers?' 'Put it in a separate publication,' their marketing experts said. But in the final analysis, I decided that this book should be a complete tool kit to revolutionize our transportation energy system, combining a broad, sweeping vision with intricate detail. "I spent four years working on this book with a small team of researchers. I traveled all over the United States in search of the most up-to-date information. In frozen South Dakota, I talked to Orrie Swayze and his farmer and VFW buddies who are taking on the oil companies, and to alcohol combustion engineer and alcohol aviation expert, Jim Behnken. I went to Decatur, Illinois, to see the largest alcohol plant in the U.S., Archer Daniels Midland's 200-million-gallon-per-year plant. My travels also took me to Brazil to document the world's largest alcohol fuel program. "It took over 25 years to finally get this book to you. It represents the confidence of almost 30 people who collectively loaned more than $250,000 to see this project through. It's the most comprehensive book ever written about alcohol fuel. Its production has been a massive effort that has depended on the cooperation of hundreds of people who contributed both their knowledge and, more importantly, their experiences.".
Price: $32.24
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Photovoltaics: Design and Installation Manual
Producing electricity from the sun using photovoltaic (PV) systems has become a major industry worldwide. But designing, installing and maintaining such systems requires knowledge and training, and there have been few easily accessible, comprehensive guides to the subject. Now, with Photovoltaics: Design and Installation Manual, a world-class solar energy training and education provider-Solar Energy International (SEI)-has made available the critical information to successfully design, install and maintain PV systems. The book contains an overview of photovoltaic electricity and a detailed description of PV system components, including PV modules, batteries, controllers and inverters. It also includes chapters on sizing photovoltaic systems, analyzing sites and installing PV systems, as well as detailed appendices on PV system maintenance, troubleshooting and solar insolation data for over 300 sites around the world. Used worldwide as the textbook in SEI's PV Design & Installation workshops, topics covered include: The basics of solar electricity
PV applications and system components
Solar site analysis and mounting
Stand-alone and PV/generator hybrid system sizing
Utility-interactive PV systems
Component specification, system costs and economics
Case studies and safety issues Photovoltaics guarantees that those wanting to learn the skills of tapping the sun's energy can do so with confidence. Solar Energy International (SEI) has the nonprofit mission to respond to the need for renewable energy education. Based in Carbondale, Colorado, and active around the world, SEI is a link between people and renewable energy resources, providing information, education and training to people who want to shape a sustainable future. SEI is recognized by the National Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) as dedicated independent provider of PV training programs that may be used toward attaining PV certification. Also, SEI is recognized as an Accredited Institution to offer PV training by the Institute for Sustainable Power (ISP). .
Price: $35.95
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The Renewable Energy Handbook: A Guide to Rural Energy Independence, Off-Grid and Sustainable Living
As oil prices continue to rise, many people are starting to think about how to unhook from the electricity grid. The Renewable Energy Handbook focuses completely on off-grid, sustainable living and rural energy independence. Author/engineer William Kemp, who is a leading expert in small and mid-scale renewable energy technologies, designed and built his own off-grid home. The result is a house that has all the standard "middle class" creature comforts while using less than five times the total fossil-fuel energy of the average North American house. The Renewable Energy Handbook focuses on the unique requirements of off-grid living and contains chapters on energy conservation, heating and cooling, backup power, domestic water heating, wireless communications, photovoltaic, wind and microhydro energy generation, battery selection, and inverters. Since its release in 2003, The Renewable Energy Handbook has been a top-selling technology book and is recognized as the best book in its field. The book is augmented with hundreds of illustrations, line drawings, photographs and appendices. .
Price: $18.03
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Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
How to harness the great forces of capitalism to save the world from catastrophe The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that's not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the twenty-first century. In these pages the reader will encounter the bold innovators and investors who are reinventing energy and the ways we use it. Among them: a frontier impresario who keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs; a utility engineer who feeds smokestack gases from coal-fired plants to voracious algae, then turns them into fuel; and a tribe of Native Americans, for two thousand years fishermen in the roughest Pacific waters, who are now harvesting the fierce power of the waves themselves. These entrepreneurs are poised to remake the world's biggest business and save the planet—if America's political leaders give them a fair chance to compete..
Price: $12.00
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The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times. In The Party's Over, Richard Heinberg places this momentous transition in historical context, showing how industrialism arose from the harnessing of fossil fuels, how competition to control access to oil shaped the geopolitics of the twentieth century and how contention for dwindling energy resources in the twenty-first century will lead to resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and South America. He describes the likely impacts of oil depletion and all of the energy alternatives. Predicting chaos unless the United States-the world's foremost oil consumer-is willing to join with other countries to implement a global program of resource conservation and sharing, he also recommends a "managed collapse" that might make way for a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future. More readable than other accounts of this issue, with fuller discussion of the context, social implications and recommendations for personal, community, national and global action, Heinberg's updated book is a riveting wake-up call for human-kind as the oil era winds down, and a critical tool for understanding and influencing current US foreign policy. Richard Heinberg, from Santa Rosa, California, has been writing about energy resources issues and the dynamics of cultural change for many years. A member of the core faculty at New College of California, he is an award-winning author of three previous books. His Museletter was nominated for the Best Alternative Newsletter award by Utne in 1993. .
Price: $10.13
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Solar Water Heating: A Comprehensive Guide to Solar Water and Space Heating Systems (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)
Heating water with the sun is almost as old as humankind itself, and it is done all over the world. Yet there are strangely few resources on the topic in North America Solar Water Heating fills this gap. It reviews the history of solar water and space heating systems from prehistory to the present, then presents the basics of solar water heating, including an introduction to modern solar energy systems, energy conservation and energy economics. Drawing on the author's experience as an installer of these systems, the book goes on to cover: - Types of solar collectors, solar water and space heating systems and solar pool heating systems, including their advantages and disadvantages
- System components, their installation, operation, and maintenance
- System sizing and siting
- Choosing the appropriate system.
Since people often get turned off by the up-front cost, the book focuses especially on the financial aspects of solar water or space heating systems, clearly showing that such systems can save significant costs in the long run. Well-illustrated, the book is designed for a wide readership from the curious to the student or professional. Bob Ramlow is the solar thermal consultant for the Wisconsin Focus on Energy Program. The owner of a renewable energy company, he has over 30 years experience with solar energy systems and is a founder and director of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA). Benjamin Nusz currently works as a solar water heating consultant and site assessor in Wisconsin. .
Price: $15.53
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Convert It!
This book is the leading how-to resource for electric car conversions It combines Brown's years of professional automotive experience with down-to-earth language even an automotive beginner can understand. It is not written for the engineer in the laboratory, but for the home mechanic building his own car, and for the average person behind the wheel. Brown speaks to the reader as if talking to a friend in his garage. Before lifting a wrench, Brown answers the most frequently asked questions about electric cars: how fast will it go, how far will it go, how long will the batteries last, how pollution-free is it really, and many more. The conversion process itself begins with choosing an appropriate donor chassis, and stripping it of internal combustion components. Here Brown's experience provide numerous tips and tricks to make the later conversion process easier and more successful. Step by step, Brown leads the reader through the conversion. As each component comes up, Brown gives a little background on the different types available, and the pros and cons of each. He includes tips on layout, design and fabrication at each step, and discusses different approaches for different chassis, such as front wheel drive vs. rear wheel drive. By the end of the book, every part of the conversion process has been discussed. Brown wraps up with a procedure for testing and troubleshooting, and guidelines for normal driving, charging, and maintenance. The book is salted heavily throughout with photos and diagrams to illustrate its topics, and it includes a very thorough index. CONVERT IT has been chosen by the Department of Energy and by numerous schools across the country as the textbook for high school electric car conversion projects..
Price: $24.95
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