Bill McKibben is a former staff writer for The New Yorker magazine who also writes regularly for other magazines. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, VT, and is the author of ten books as of 2007. (For his books I've read, click on his name.)

McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in history, “more” is no longer synonymous with “better’ – indeed, for many of us, they have become opposites. He discusses a better way to think about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all – to move beyond growth as the primary economic ideal and to pursue prosperity more locally, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, energy, culture, and entertainment. He shows this concept is blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning societies of India and China to the mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems. For those who wonder of there isn’t more to life than buying, he provokes one to think about one’s life as an individual and as a member of a larger community.

A generation ago many deep thinkers advocated “deep ecology” to move beyond short-term piecemeal reforms by asking profound questions about the choices people make in their daily lives. Bill McKibben demonstrates that we need to make a similar shift in our thinking about economics – to a “deep economy” that takes human satisfaction and societal durability into account. And as he so eloquently shows, the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own.

Books 207 and 208 treat diametric opposites: book 207 is about Grameen’s way to let the most poor communities move up from abject poverty to self-sufficient and sustainable lifestyles; book 208 is about how our wealthy nation (of poverty-amidst-overabundance) can move toward durable lifestyles. To focus your mind on the future, imagine that we (the first-world nations) fail to do so and that, in a couple of decades, India’s and China’s efforts to match our lifestyles succeed. If you think that such goals (i.e., another 2 billion living like us) are remotely feasible, then you must come down from your dream world and recall that the world’s resources are limited. However, even if the world’s resources could magically double or triple, the lifestyles McKibben describes would be far better for us than what we (in the US) have now. Read this powerful and provocative book and learn why. A friend recommended: “If you read any book this year, make it this one.” I’m very glad I listened – I give this book a very strong recommendation.