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Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front | 
 enlarge | Author: Sharon Astyk
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy New: $11.54
You Save: $7.41 (39%)
New (19) Used (5) from $10.99
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 5558
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0865716145
Dewey Decimal Number: 900
EAN: 9780865716148
ASIN: 0865716145
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Climate change, peak oil, and economic instability aren't just future social problems-they jeopardize our homes and families right now. Our once-abundant food supply is being threatened by toxic chemical agriculture, rising food prices, and crop shortages brought on by climate change. Funding for education and health care is strained to the limit, and safe and affordable housing is disappearing. Depletion and Abundance explains how we are living beyond our means with or without a peak oil/climate change crisis, and that, either way, we must learn to place our families and local communities at the center of our thinking once again. The author presents strategies to create stronger homes, better health, and a richer family life and to: - live comfortably with an uncertain energy supply
- prepare children for a hotter, lower energy, less secure world
- survive and thrive in an economy in crisis
- maintain a kitchen garden to supply basic food needs
Most importantly, readers will discover that depletion can lead to abundance, and the anxiety of these uncertain times can be turned into a gift of hope and action. An unusual family perspective on the topic, this book will appeal to all those interested in securing a future for their children and grandchildren. Sharon Astyk is a former academic who farms in upstate New York with her husband and four children. She also raises livestock, grows vegetables, and writes about food and peak oil. (Check out her blog-www.sharonastyk.com.)
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| Customer Reviews:
 Thanks for That October 2, 2008
paulette
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Just because of that last comment about population, I'm buying the book. Keep it up Sharon! Love your blog! The dried up anti-population people will soon contracept themselves out of existence.
 with that many kids, she's depleting September 26, 2008
Kuehnemund (Vermont)
3 out of 37 found this review helpful
This woman has four kids? Unless at least 3 of them are adopted, she's doing her bit for depletion, no matter how sustainably she lives. There's only so much that can be photosynthesized for food on this planet, and she's overpopulating.
Turning Less into More September 20, 2008
Story Circle Book Reviews (www.storycirclebookreviews.org)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
The secondary title of this book--One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family while Coming to Terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times--pretty much tells the story.
This is not just another of those doom-and-gloom, batten-down-the-hatches-and-man-the-lifeboat handbooks we have seen so many of in the past few years. I've read most of those other books, and while they are helpful in understanding why we are where we are (in terms of energy depletion, climate change, and overwhelming personal and national debt), they don't go very far toward helping us deal with the problems we are facing.
Depletion and Abundance is different. For one thing, it is written by a woman--a smart, well-informed, and energetic woman. She is also a mother of four small children who manages to grow a garden, put food in the freezer, home school the kids, and write about it. These are not small matters, for all of the other books that have been written about energy, environmental, and economic woes have been written by men, bless 'em. These writers understand conceptually what we are facing and tell us with great authority and occasional sympathy just how bad it's likely to be. But Sharon Astyk is different. She speaks with authority and sympathy, but she focuses on how we can manage when tough times come. She writes with cheerfulness, humor, and great personal commitment. I'm betting that, if anybody can show us the way forward, she can.
For another thing, Depletion and Abundance is a book about the "new home front"--and if you ask me, this is where our real battles will be fought: not in Washington or in some foreign country, and not with guns (we hope). We will be trying to make our lives better at home. We will be working with a toolkit that women will need to know how to acquire and use: food from the garden, low-energy appliances, and care and attention to the wise conservation and deployment of the family's resources of time, effort, and money, in and out of the "official economy." Peak oil and gas, the use of coal and nuclear and renewable resources--these are public issues and must of course be addressed by national and local governments. But as Astyk points out repeatedly, it all comes home in the end. Home is where we will find sufficiency or scarcity, and it is women who will man the home front. This is a new message, an important message. We need to listen up.
Depletion and Abundance is full of important and helpful ideas. Astyk suggests ways we can reduce our consumption, get out of debt, and learn how to use what we have--use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without: the real homeland security, as she sees it. She has learned to live on seasonal produce and local foods. She and her family have faced the frightening fact that our futures may not be fully or continuously electrified (as I write this, Hurricane Ike has imposed this knowledge on some four million reluctant learners). Astyk has learned how to cope and she tells us how. Indeed, she is never stingy with her ideas. There's a 14-page appendix full of good suggestions for turning less into more, and more, and more.
And that, at least for me, is what is most important about this book. Yes, we're facing an unpredictable future where there will be less of everything. But the human spirit, as Astyk shows us, is capable of a marvelous alchemy. We can turn tough times into a test, and pass it. We can become self-sufficient, and in the process, learn how to recognize true abundance when we see it. Hers is an optimistic vision, to be sure--overly optimistic, in some ways. But we need optimism now, don't we? And if we need it now, we'll need it even more next week or next year or the years after that, in what may be a future most of us don't want to think about.
Read Depletion and Abundance and see if it doesn't change your ideas about what's ahead. It just might change your life, too.
by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
thought and action provoking September 14, 2008
A. Levy (Oxford, UK)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Carbon Detox (Gaia Thinking)
Depletion and Abundance is helping me to take postive action through a sense of panic primarily, for me, related to how fast the climate is changing. She's reminding me of what really matters in family life, and community life. This is a Be Prepared manual that doesn't place individuals outside of their communities. Astyk is incredibly intelligent and funny as well. There's lots of fascinating social history and well as personal reportage. This book is going to be a classic. I love it. I only wish I had time to sit down and read it without interruption....
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