Bob Russell's Reading List

As one of his final gifts to the community, Bob Russell offers a recommended reading list for understanding the concept of community resilience. Traverse City and the surrounding areas owe much to his civic engagement and leadership over more than 30 years, including one of the cleanest sewage disposal plants on the Great Lakes, preserving of the Barns and surrounding property for the public's use and management, and prevention of a shopping mall where today's Sara Hardy Farmer's Market enjoys such huge success. Much of Bob Russel's recent work has focused on creating the discussions needed to push resilience planning to the forefront here in the Traverse City region. Bob's battle with cancer has taken him away from public leadership. It is a big loss to our community.

Resilience, as applied to human communities, comes to us from an understanding of the fundamentals of the resilience we see in natural sytems all around us. Resilience thinking starts with a deep recognition that man-made communities are intimately connected to the eco-system, to Nature. Nature provides for us in the form of eco-system services: clean air, water, healthy soil and other resources of many kinds. Healthy eco-system services are the source of all wealth and sustainability for human communities. Yet, resilience is really about adaptability, not sustainability. We must plant the seeds of resilient strength in our communities, ready to adapt to a future of change that we cannot forecast but which promises to be far different from the past. Pick out a book and get started.Thumbnail

 

 Watch one of Bob's speeches here!

 

 

The Overstory: A Novel By Richard Powers Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9780393635522
Availability: Available to ship within 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - April 3rd, 2018

2018 Bob Russell Read


The Wealth of Nature: Economics as If Survival Mattered By John Michael Greer Cover Image
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ISBN: 9780865716735
Availability: Out of Print
Published: New Society Publishers - June 1st, 2011

This is perhaps the most important and easily read book about economics one can choose. Modern day economic theory misses the eternal connection that bonds real wealth to the economic system services provided to us by our planet. Money is not wealth.


Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution By Marjorie Kelly Cover Image
$26.19
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ISBN: 9781605093109
Published: Berrett-Koehler Publishers - June 4th, 2012

How do we make the future that will hapen be the future that needs to happen, if human societies are going to survive? What must we grasp first, in order to change our  behavor and consume less?


Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation By Michael Pollan Cover Image
$27.95
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ISBN: 9781594204210
Published: Penguin Press - April 23rd, 2013

From this book on the Authors series on food, our own health, and the health of our food system depends on this #1 rule: cook your own food!


Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity (Community Resilience Guides) By Michael Shuman, Peter Buffett (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Michael Shuman, Peter Buffett (Foreword by)
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ISBN: 9781603583435
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Chelsea Green Publishing Company - February 20th, 2012

A must read and local favorite. The single biggest export that leaves every local community is the sum of its citizens' investment dollars. They are exported into a worldwide financial system which we all know is frail. Shuman tells us how we must learn to invest in Main St. and not Wall St.


For The Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future By Herman E. Daly Cover Image
$51.25
ISBN: 9780807047057
Availability: Available to ship within 1-5 days
Published: Beacon Press - April 1st, 1994

Our society has swung too far towards individualism, dismantling our sense of community membership. Only recognition of the common good can save us.


The Energy Reader: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth By Tom Butler (Editor), George Wuerthner (Editor), Daniel Lerch (Editor) Cover Image
By Tom Butler (Editor), George Wuerthner (Editor), Daniel Lerch (Editor)
$19.95
ISBN: 9780970950093
Availability: Available to ship within 1-5 days
Published: Watershed Media - October 16th, 2012

Energy is the common factor in all we accomplish in life.  Lokked at this simply, there are real, earth-bound limits to the supply of easy energy in the future. Our future will be characterized by constrained energy supply with unavoidable limits to growth.


Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9780374533557
Availability: On Our Shelves Now!
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - April 2nd, 2013

Also a book about governance: how do we make governance decisions; how can we make it better; how do we engage effectivel


Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity By Lester R. Brown Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780393344158
Availability: Available to ship within 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - October 1st, 2012

Another powerful book from one of the most cogent thinkers of our time. The message might be scary: the geopolitics of our food supply makes it even more frail.


Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems (Community Resilience Guides) By Philip Ackerman-Leist, Deborah Madison (Foreword by) Cover Image
$24.95
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ISBN: 9781603584234
Published: Chelsea Green Publishing Company - January 31st, 2013

rebuilding


The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future By Laurence C. Smith Cover Image
$17.00
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ISBN: 9780452297470
Published: Plume - October 25th, 2011

This is a fascinating read that simply extrapolates developements already taking place across the far northern hemisphere into the year 2050. What will we look like?