Despite the United States' economic abundance, "the good life" has proved elusive. Millions long for more time for friends and family, for reading or walking or relaxing. Instead our lives are frantic, hectic, and harried. In Graceful Simplicity, Jerome M. Segal, philosopher, political activist, and former staff member of the House Budget Committee, expands and deepens the contemporary discourse on simple living. He articulates his conception of a politics of simplicity—one rooted in beauty, peace of mind, appreciativeness, and generosity of spirit.
Argues that Americans have found that economic abundance is not fulfilling in itself, and suggests ways to change how we think about money and the simple life
Where do our journeys take us? What do we leave behind? What do we carry with us? How do we find our way? You are invited to consider a more graceful way of traveling through life. With arresting clarity, Journeys of Simplicity offers vignettes of forty travelers and the few, ordinary things they carried with them—from place to place, from day to day, from birth to death. Edward Abbey Nellie Bly Raymond Carver Dorothy Day Marcel Duchamp Dolores Garcia /Emma “Grandma” Gatewood Mohandas Gandhi Peter Matthiessen William Least Heat Moon John Muir Robert Pirsig Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton Henry David Thoreau Father Zossima and others
A collection of essays consider such topics as creating a cool lifestyle for a warming planet, the connection between faith and environmental protection, and working toward creating a carbon-friendly economy.
Simplicity Lessons is a practical guide for those who long for a slower pace of life with more time for relationships, fulfilling work, and living ones dreams. Working on your own or as part of a simplicity study group, you will explore the major a
When Voluntary Simplicity was first published in 1981, it quickly became recognized as a powerful and visionary work in the emerging dialogue over sustainable ways of living. Nearly three decades later, as the planet’s environmental stresses become more urgent than ever, Duane Elgin has revised and updated his revolutionary book. Voluntary Simplicity is not about living in poverty; it is about living with balance. This book illuminates the pattern of changes that an increasing number of people around the world are making in their everyday lives—adjustments in day-to-day living that are an active, positive response to the complex dilemmas of our time. By embracing a lifeway of voluntary simplicity—characterized by ecological awareness, frugal consumption, and personal growth—people can change their lives. And in the process, they have the power to change the world.
This multidisciplinary study combines social science, energy analysis, and risk communication, using theory, research, and computer-aided interviews to illustrate the range and relative effectiveness of interventions that support sustainable energy consumption. Based on award-winning research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the book combines analytical modeling techniques with social science on sustainable consumption.
Comic Grace is Comb’s third book on the movies for Cambridge Scholars Publishing. These books hardly form a trilogy, but they do express a pragmatic interest of the author; namely, the aspects of movies that we have not adequately studied. More specifically, the first, Movie Time, examines the inadequately understood temporal appearance of movies, in movies set in the past, the present, and the future, attempting to make sense of such questions as to why certain past periods still fascinate, how an emergent present is accompanied by cinematic treatment, and what kind of futures we like to speculate about by watching alternative futures on film. This temporal interest was complemented in the second book, Wit’s End by examination of qualitative interest, discussing how and why certain movies come to be regarded and remembered by the movie culture as great and memorable. Even though there is obviously no unanimous agreement on which movies are “canonical”, there is enough consensus among those who study and value films for us to constitute inquiry into why some films are thought great. This third book in this sustained inquiry poses the question of not only why we think some movie comedies are great, but also what is unique and enduring in the legacy of comedy on film. The book looks at comedy with humane interest, entertaining the proposition that comedy may well be motion picture’s greatest achievement. If so, then it behooves inquirers to understand what movie audiences enjoy and cherish about movie comedy, and what it is about the film medium that so adequately communicates the comedic across such vast audiences and why they never tire of certain kinds of comedy. These interests will inspire students of the remarkable medium of film to inquire further into not only these questions, but also others that they find interesting and illuminating about the film experience.
