From the Introduction
Why You Need this Book

A kind of citizen energy consciousness has rooted itself in America. We now know too much to make fun of alternative energy as something for latter-day hippies living in yurts. This latest energy awakening really started in the late 1990s, when electricity supplies faltered during high-use summer periods. Then in late 2004 the price of crude oil started to rise; and since 2007 it has shot into ranges previously unimaginable. The shock of $40-per-barrel of oil in 2004 became $60, $100, and, by July 2008, above $140...

Go Forward by Going Back in Time

Homesteading fever gripped many Americans in the 1970s. The movement got its fuel from energy shortages, the environmental movement, and a recession.
The United States Department of Agriculture, perhaps sensing that new enthusiasts might not know what they were getting into, decided to devote its yearbook of agriculture for 1978 to the movement. They called the book Living on a Few Acres. The USDA’s yearbooks of agriculture compiled the best advice for anyone who desired to learn from 1894 through 1992, when,...

Exploring the human side of weather

Compiled and edited by: Dave Thurlow & Ralph Adler. North Conway: Mount Washington Observatory, 1999. Paperback, 150 pages.

Essays by Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, Chet Raymo, Jan DeBlieu, Dave Thurlow, Eric Pinder, Robert Henson, David Laskin, Mary Reed, Christine Woodside, Peter Felknor, Jeff Grabmeier, Robert Irion, John Hanson Mitchell, Paul Breeden, David Clark, Diane Ackerman, Craig Werth, Catherine Buni and Ralph Adler.

Soul of the Sky is a different kind of weather book. It’s not...