What We Leave Behind

Description

A piercing and impassioned guide to living a truly responsible life on earth. Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. Here, award-winning writer Jensen and activist McBay weave historical analysis and devastatingly beautiful prose to remind readers that life - human and non-human - will not go on unless everything possible is done to safeguard the most basic process on earth - one being's waste is another being's food.

Activist, philosopher, teacher, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, DERRICK JENSEN holds degrees in creative writing and mineral engineering physics. In 2008, he was named one of theUtne Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World," and in 2006 he was named Press Action's Person of the Year for his work on the bookEndgame. He lives in California. Writer, activist, and small-scale organic farmer ARIC MCBAY works to share information about community sufficiency and off-the-grid skills. He is the author ofPeak Oil Survival- Preparation for Life after Gridcrashand creator of "In the Wake- A Collective Manual-in-Progress for Outliving Civilization" (www.inthewake.org).

"An in-depth analysis of waste and wastefulness ... Some may bridle at Jensen and McBay's bluntness, urgency, and bold vision, but their demand for the end of wishful thinking and beginning of environmental transformation is rooted in meticulously constructed arguments, striking psychological insights, and profound love of life." -Donna Seaman, Booklist "What We Leave Behind is the kind of direct, unflinching, personal writing that you'd expect from a memoir about a harrowing childhood, not one about the state of the planet, or what happens to waste ... The directness of the storytelling and of the horrific vision [Jensen and McBay] lay out is both depressing, and oddly, comforting." -Brita Belli, E Magazine "Jensen and McBay's message that we need to grow up and 'put away the childish notion that we have the right to take whatever we want from nonhumans' is eminently reasonable." -Publishers Weekly