Moonshadow Reading List

Please note: This list has been composed over the years by Moonshadow’s family and friends. We neither advocate for nor refute the contents within these titles. We suggest the reader develop the ability to think critically and independently, to recognize that the desirous find ephemeral truths, but that the critical experiencer’s continuing adventure through the ecological terrains of being… bequeaths the stuff of life.
– Joel Kimmons


Help us out while buying from Powell’s Books!
Follow the link below:


Topics:

Homesteading and Agriculture (Do It Yourself)(DIY)

  • Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik
  • Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow
  • Fox Fire series
  • From Eco-Cities to Living Machines by John and Nancy Jack Todd
  • How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavors
  • Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison with K. Slay
  • Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills
  • Perelandra Garden Workbook by Michelle Small Wright
  • Permaculture – A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future by Bill Mollison
  • Permaculture by Bill Mollison
  • Permaculture, Ecovillages, and Homesteading
  • Rodale publications esp. from the 70’s
  • Seed to Seed by Susan Ashworth
  • The Conversion and Seasoning of Wood by William H. Brown
  • The Enchanted Garden by Alan Chadwick
  • The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Emery
  • The Natural Way of Farming – The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy by Masanobu Fukuoka
  • The Self-Sufficient Gardner by John Seymour
  • Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention by Lee Reich
  • Understanding Wood : A Craftman’s Guide to Wood Technology by R. Bruce Hoadley
  • Whole Earth Catalog – a good source for books on this topic

^top

Food and Cooking

  • 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Gelles
  • The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens by Daniel Wing, Alan Scott
  • Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe
  • Ecological Cooking by j. Stepaniak and K. Hecker
  • Healing Foods Cookbook by J. Sen
  • Joy of Cooking by I. S. Rombauer, et al.
  • Let’s Cook It Right by Adelle Davis
  • More-With-Less Cookbook by D. J. Longacre
  • On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
  • Simply Vegan by D. Wasserman
  • Tassajara Cooking by E.E. Brown
  • The American Vegetarian Cookbook from the Fit For Life Kitchen by Marilyn Diamond
  • The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Yamuna Devi
  • The Cookbook for People Who Love Animals
  • The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook editor Louise Hagler
  • The Tassajara Bread Book by E.E. Brown
  • The TVP Cookbook by D.R. Bates
  • The Uncheese Cookbook by Joanne Stepaniak
  • Uprisings: The Whole Grain Baker’ Book by The Cooperative Whole Grain Education Association
  • The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz
  • Vegetarian Celebrations by Nava Atlas
  • Voluptuous Vegan by Myra Kornfeld, Sheila Hamanaka (Illustrator), and George R. Minot
  • World Vegetarian by M. Jaffrey

^top

Health and Nutrition

Authors: Susan Weed, Jeanne Rose, Andrew Weil

  • Beyond Illness: Discovering the Experience of Health by Larry Dossey
  • Eating Well for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil
  • Ecopsychology Ed. T. Roszak
  • Imagery in Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine by J. Achterberg
  • Male Herbal by James Green
  • Natural Family Doctor by Dr. Andrew Stanway
  • Our Bodies Ourselves
  • Ourselves Growing Older
  • Places of the Soul – Architecture and Environmental Design as a Healing Art
  • Space, Time, and Medicine by Larry Dossey
  • Spontaneous Healing by Andrew Weil
  • The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils by Julia Lawless
  • Presciption for Nutritional Healing by Phyllis A. Balch, C.N.C., James F. Balch, M.D.

^top

Herbs and Poison

  • The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
  • Chocolate to Morphine – Understanding Mind-Active Substances by Andrew Weil and Winifred Rosen
  • Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham
  • The Dictionary of Useful Plants by Nelson Coon
  • Forgotten Truth by Smith
  • The Green Pharmacy by James A. Duke
  • Guide to Medicinal Plants by Paul Schauenberg and Ferdinand Paris
  • The Herb Book by John Lust
  • Herbal Emissaries by Steven Foster and Chongxi
  • Medicinal Plants – Peterson Field Guides by Foster and Duke
  • Persephone’s Quest by Gordon Wasson, Kramrisch, Jonathon Ott and Ruck
  • Pharmacotheon by Jonathon Ott
  • Pharmako/Poeia by Dale Pendell
  • Plants for a Future by Ken Fern
  • Plants of the Gods by Sir Richard Evan Schultes and Albert Hofmann
  • Plants that Poison by Schmutz and Hamilton
  • Tastes of Paradise by Wolfgang Schivelbusch (a social history of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants)

^top

Fermentation

  • Wild Fermentation by Sandorkraut
  • Brewing the World’s Greatest Beers by Miller
  • Principles of Brewing Science by George Fix
  • Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers by Stephen Buhner
  • Sweet and Hard Ciders by Prouix and Nichols
  • The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian
  • The Home Brewer’s Companion by Charlie Papazian
  • The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garey
  • The Permaculture Book of Fermentation and Human Nutrition by Bill Mollison

^top

Pregnancy and Birth

  • A Child is Born by Lennart Nilsson
  • Aromatherapy for Pregnancy and Childbirth by Margaret Fawcett
  • Birthing from Within by Pam England and Rob Horowitz
  • The Creative Journal for Parents by Lucia Capacchione
  • Essential Exercises for the Childbearing Year by Elizabeth Noble
  • The Mother of All Pregnancy Books
  • Natural Pregnancy by Janet Balaskas
  • The Natural Pregnancy Book by Aviva Jill Romm
  • Pregnancy the Natural Way by Zita West
  • Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year by Susan Weed

^top

Childcare and Breastfeeding

  • Celebrating the Great Mother – a Handbook of Earth-honoring Activities for Parents and Children by Cait Johnson and Maura D. Shaw
  • Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy
  • The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding by La Leche League International

^top

Science, Deep Ecology, and Philosophy

  • A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
  • Birth of the Prison by M. Foucault (philosophy)
  • Coming into Being by William I. Thompson
  • Contact by Carl Sagan
  • Deep Ecology by George Sessions and Bill Duvall
  • Deep Ecology for the 21st Century
  • Encompassing Nature, A Source Book: nature and culture from ancient times to the modern world by Robert M. Torrance,ed
  • Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh (The epic quest to solve the world’s greatest mathematical problem)
  • Food of the Gods by Terence Mckenna
  • Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization by John Perlin
  • Gaia by J. Lovelock
  • Gaia’s Body by Tyler Volk
  • Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
  • Green Rage by Christopher Manes,
  • Green Space, Green Time by Connie Barlow
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
  • Knowing and Being: A Postmodern Reversal by James R. Mensch
  • Krakatau: The Destruction and Reassembly of an Island Ecosystem by Ian Thornton
  • Lamarck’s Signature by E.J. Steele et al.
  • Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
  • Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run by David Brower
  • Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer
  • Living my Life by Emma Goldman
  • Nature and Madness by Paul Shepard
  • Nature’s Economy : A History of Ecological Ideas by Donald Worster
  • Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil by Daniel Hillel
  • Perceiving Ordinary Magic: Science and Intuitive Wisdom by J.W. Hayward
  • Phenomenology ed. J. Kockelmans
  • Principia Discordia by Malaclypse the Younger, et. al
  • Reading The Mountains of Home by John Elder (wilderness, philosophy etc./non-fiction)
  • Roots of Consciousness by Jeffrey Mishlove
  • Sacred Geometry by Robert Lawlor
  • Sacred Land, Sacred Sex by Dolores LaChapelle
  • Scientist as Subject: the psychological Imperative by Michael J. Mahoney
  • Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
  • Symbiotic Planet by Lynn Margulis
  • The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology by Edmund Husserl
  • The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant
  • The Descent of the Child by Elaine Morgan
  • The Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno (philosophy)
  • The Dying of the Trees by Charles Little
  • The Eternal Frontier by Tim Flannery
  • The History of Sexuality by Foucault (philosophy)
  • The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
  • The Order of Things by Foucault (philosophy)
  • The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
  • The Origin of Species by Darwin
  • The Outsider by Colin Wilson
  • The Philosopher’s Stone by Colin Wilson
  • The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
  • The Song of the Dodo : Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions by David Quammen
  • The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abraham,
  • The Tree of Knowledge by H.R. Maturana and F.J. Varela
  • The Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin
  • Tracking the Vanishing Frogs: An Ecological Mystery by Kathryn Phillips
  • Wilderness and the American Mind by R.F. Nash
  • The Others by Paul Shephard

^top

Politics, Economics, and Development

  • Against History, Against Leviathon by Freddy Perlman,
  • Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner (environmental history)
  • Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
  • Confessions of an Eco-Warrior by Dave Foreman,
  • Domination and the Arts of Resistance by James Scott (sociology)
  • Eco-Pioneers by Steve Lerner
  • Encountering Development by Arturo Escobar (development/anthropology)
  • Hermann Hesse’s Das Glasperlenspiel : A Concealed Defense of the Mother World by Edmund Remys
  • Letters from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King
  • Meditation by Marcus Aurelius
  • Relentless Persistence: Nonviolent Action in Latin America by Philip McManus and Gerald Schlabach
  • Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky,
  • Small Is Beautiful : Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher
  • The Affluent Society (economics)
  • The Art of War by Sun Tzu
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X
  • The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels (Marxism)
  • The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey (political economy)
  • The Final Empire by William Kotke
  • The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  • The Tao of Politics
  • The Violence of the Green Revolution by Vandana Shiva
  • Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  • War Against the Greens by David Helvarg
  • When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten (political economy)
  • Workers in a Lean World by Kim Moody (labor history)

^top

Art and Design

  • Art as Medicine by Shaun McNiff
  • Art of the 20th Century by Jean-Louis Ferrier
  • Artist’s Manual by Chronicle Books
  • Criticizing Art by Terry Barrett
  • Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
  • How to Draw Plants by Keith West
  • Making Glass Beads by Cindy Jenkins
  • Making Wire Jewelry by Helen Clegg and Mary Larom
  • The Oil Painting Book by Bill Creevy
  • The Power of the Center by Rudolph Arnheim
  • Visual Thinking by Rudolph Arnheim

^top

Fiction

  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • Always Coming Home by LeGuin, Ursula K.
  • A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick
  • Anarchist Farm by Jane Doe
  • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  • Beyond Realtime by Vernor Vinge
  • Bliss by Peter Carey
  • Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks (fiction about John Brown before the civil war)
  • The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging by Ernest Callenbach,
  • Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson
  • Fearsum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks
  • Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
  • Fup by Jim Dodge (Ducks, Whiskey, and Mysticism)
  • Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
  • In the Heart of the Fire
  • Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn
  • Island by Huxley
  • Love In The Ruins by Walker Percy
  • Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
  • Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge (discovery of higher truth)
  • Patagonia by Bruce Chatwyn
  • Permutation City by Greg Egan
  • Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan
  • Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
  • Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
  • A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin
  • Songlines by Bruce Chatwyn
  • The 5th Sacred Thing by Starhawk
  • The Futurololgical Congress by Stanislaw Lem
  • The Griffin and Sabine books by Nick Bantock
  • The Reader
  • The River Why by David James Duncan
  • The Third Policeman by Flan O’Brien (a slightly different view on the world and bicycles)
  • The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
  • Ulysses by James Joyce
  • Walkabout Woman
  • Zodiac by Neal Stephenson

^top

Books for Children

Authors: Colin Thompson, Eric Carle, Schim Schimmel, Janell Cannon

  • Fairy Houses by Tracy Kane
  • Guess How Much I Love You by Sam Mc Bratney
  • Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus
  • On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier
  • The Story of Colors by Subcomandate Marcos
  • Toot and Puddle books by Holly Hobbie
  • Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein
  • Wump World by Bill Peet

^top

Books for Young Adults

  • A Teen’s Guide to Going Vegetarian by Judy Krizmanic
  • Dinotopia books by James Gurney
  • Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien
  • Richard Orr’s Nature Cross-sections by R. Orr
  • Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
  • R is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury

^top

Media

Authors: Michael Parenti, Normon Solomon, Marshall McLuhan

  • Adventures in Medialand by Jeff Cohen and Normon Solomon
  • The Media Monopoly by Bagdikian
  • Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
  • Unreliable Sources by Martin A. Lee and Normon Solomon

^top

Magazines

  • Adbusters
  • All Round (for kids aged 1 to 100)
  • Hip Mama
  • Heron Dance
  • Mothering
  • Orion

^top

Authors

  • Abbey, Edward
  • Bari, Judi
  • Berry, Thomas
  • Berry, Wendell
  • Bolgiano, Christina
  • Bookchin, Murray
  • Bradford, George
  • Brower, David
  • Buck, Pearl S
  • Caldicott, Helen
  • Callenbach, Ernest
  • Chomsky, Noam
  • Elton, Ben
  • Foucault, Michelle
  • Goldman, Emma
  • Huxley, Aldous
  • Irving, John
  • King Jr, Martin Luther
  • Kingsolver, Barbara
  • Kropotkin, Peterl
  • Lasker-Schueler, Else
  • LeGuin, Ursula K.
  • Malcom X
  • Mander, Jerry
  • Margulus, Lynn
  • Mckibbon, Bill
  • McLuhan, Marshall
  • Merchant, Carolyn
  • Metzner, Ralph
  • Mills, Stephanie
  • Muir, John
  • Musil, Robert
  • Nash, R F
  • Parenti, Michael
  • Quinn, Daniel
  • Rifkin, Jeremy
  • Robbins, Tom
  • Roszak, Theodore
  • Sale, Kirkpatrick
  • Shepard, Paul
  • Shiva, Vandana
  • Snyder, Gary
  • Starhawk
  • Thom, James Alexander
  • Thomas, Lewis
  • Thoreau, Henry David
  • Tokar, Brian
  • Tolkein, JRR
  • Toller, Ernst
  • Tucholzky, Kurt
  • Watson, David
  • Weil, Andrew
  • Zerzan, John
  • Zinn, Howard

^top

If you would like to purchase one of these books, use the search form below to find titles or authors on Powell’s Books website.
(hint: copy & paste from the list above)

Powell’s will make a donation to SVI if you go through this website!

Links to other Reading Lists:

Frank Cook‘s Suggestions: http://www.plantsandhealers.com/books.php