Juliana Birnbaum

Sustainable Revolution:Permaculture in Ecovillages had some interesting elements within it but the book was so repetitive that it was hard to find the point. Each description of an ecovillage or intentional community was so much like the one before that I didn't enjoy the book. There was some coverage of things that I am very interested in like BIOCHAR and AQUAPONICS, but not enough to make this book worthwhile. I kept waiting for the editors to provide a definition of "permaculture" which never appeared. I had to look elsewhere to get permaculture defined, here it is: "Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.

The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions."… (meer)