This was a 2011 Christmas gift from the family :) It’s the perfect book for the person who wants to live greener, and is ready to move beyond what’s become relatively mainstream knowledge, getting serious about their personal actions. The author pitches his content as the easier basics, but I must admit that my first reaction was the quick realization that I don’t know as much as I thought I did.

Green Made Easy is a very fast read when you continue through it page to page (I read most of it on a trans-Pacific flight), but it’s also packed with web resources that can push you forward to learn more, or wring out the details of the overview Prelitz provides. Do expect some link aging though: the book was published in 2009, and the author’s own website was a disappointment for me, though it appears he’s progressed significantly.

Each section of the book (20 categories, a chapter each: “Green what you eat” “Green your kids” “Green your furnishings” “Green your mobility and travel” etc.) is prefaced with a short story as introduction, and I enjoyed Prelitz’s writing style. There is a highly efficient brevity about the book, but he covers a lot in total, and Prelitz does deliver on his promise to illustrate how we can “save money and help the environment — at the same time.”

Green Made Easy will continue to be a reference and resource guide for me as I learn more, and do more: The book inspires you to take action, and I can foresee turning this paperback into an annotated journal of my own living green progress.