Dispatches from the Sweet Life: One Family, Five Acres, and a Community's Quest to Reinvent the World

by William Powers

Many fantasize about dramatically changing their lives — living in accordance with their ideals rather than the exigencies of job, bills, and possessions. William Powers actually does it. In his book Twelve by Twelve , Powers lived in an off-grid tiny house in rural North Carolina. In New Slow City , he and his wife, Melissa, inhabited a Manhattan micro-apartment in search of slow in the fastest city in the world. Here, the couple, with baby in tow, search for balance, community, and happiness in a small town in Bolivia. They build an adobe house, plant a prolific orchard and organic garden, and weave their life into a community of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, and creative businesspeople. Can this Transition Town succeed in the face of encroaching North American capitalism, and can Powers and the other settlers find the balance they’re seeking? Dispatches from the Sweet Life is compelling, sobering, thought-provoking, and, no matter the outcome, inspiring.

Genres: Nonfiction

286 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2018

About the author

William Powers has worked for two decades in development aid and conservation in Latin America, Africa, and North America. From 2002 to 2004 he managed the community components of a project in the Bolivian Amazon that won a 2003 prize for environmental innovation from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune and on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. Powers has worked at the World Bank and holds international relations degrees from Brown and Georgetown. A third-generation New Yorker, Powers has also spent two decades exploring the American culture of speed and its alternatives in some fifty countries around the world. He has covered the subject in his four books and written about it in the Washington Post and the Atlantic. Powers is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and an adjunct faculty member at New York University. His website is www.williampowersbooks.com.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

The conclusion to this interesting trilogy. All three books are well worth it. While I'd welcome living the life Powers presents in his three experiments, at least I can live vicariously through his writing. Write more, Bill!

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting...not a life I would live, but it is a hopeful life. I would like to read the remaining two books in the trilogy.

I would like to know how dulce vida (Bolivia) and pura vida (Costa Rica) relate...if they do.

[Tristy at New World Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endorsements:
“We need every reminder we can get of the possibilities of transformation — here’s a community you’ll want to know about, and hopefully to emulate!”
— Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“Bill Powers is a wonder, a brilliant and bighearted writer able to transform the most ordinary moments of daily life into exquisite epiphanies, rich with discovery. Dispatches from the Sweet Life charts the luminous frustrations and giddy pleasures awaiting all those who choose to opt out of the high-speed addiction to progress, allying themselves instead with a real community immersed in the life of the animate earth. Powers is a one-of-a-kind reporter bringing necessary news from that mysterious edge where our gorgeous ideals meet the parched and rock-strewn soil of reality.”
— David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

“An enchanting personal story of a long journey in search of simplicity, home, and the Sweet Life.”
— David C. Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth

“This vivid story of sustainable living and overseas encounters will delight anyone who has envisioned moving to another country to embrace a simpler, more environmentally conscious lifestyle.”
— Midwest Book Review

“A compelling tale of leaving Manhattan to embed in a small, rural Bolivian town with all its wonders, differences, and commonalities. Dispatches from the Sweet Life is the vivid personal chronicle of a bold adventure in search of sustainable development — and pondering what really matters.”
— Thomas E. Lovejoy, professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University and former chief biodiversity advisor at the World Bank

“William Powers actually does what many of us in the Global North dream about and talk about but ultimately may not have the chutzpah to pull off: become an expat-on-a-budget in a place where life appears to be simpler, happier, and ultimately better. In this age in which the tyranny of time, scale, and efficiency robs us of moments to envision an alternative, Powers’s description of homesteading in Bolivia is self-effacing, funny, and strikes at the core of what is missing today: a chance to get off the combine before we get pulverized by the system. Do we need to travel far to learn what’s deep inside us all? The short answer is: probably yes.”
— Richard McCarthy, executive director of Slow Food USA

“While Dispatches from the Sweet Life is full of useful information wrapped in compelling, colorful stories, it carries something unusual for those of us steeped in the American Dream of progress and prosperity: a feeling for a life woven into a specific place on earth. How many of us actually make a place our own by letting its creatures and vegetation and characters root in us as we settle in them? This book is part memoir, part Transition Town case study, part permaculture how-to, but in largest part an invitation to absorb through all the senses — physical and spiritual — how you might feel outside the angular edifices of your work and your daily life.”
— Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life and Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth

“In essence, the Transition movement is a network of storytelling, as people around the globe share their tales of trying to build more resilient, diverse, and connected communities in wildly varying settings. The story told in Dispatches from the Sweet Life is a powerful, fascinating look at trying to do Transition in one particular place. Its pages drip with illumination, insight, and wisdom.”
— Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition movement

“William Powers’s writing is hopeful, warm, and kind. He makes us question the old American Dream, and at the same time, he offers up a new dream. Dispatches from the Sweet Life points us toward days made richer by spareness, days made meaningful through focus and care.”
— Michael Harris, author of The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

“The multigenerational project of cultural renaissance is the Great Work of our time. In Dispatches from the Sweet Life, Bill Powers gifts us with an engaging and intimate look at the personal challenges, risks, and joys of reinventing human community and of imaginatively loving our interdependent and sacred more-than-human world.”
— Bill Plotkin, author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

“The foundation of the ‘Sweet Life,’ this book makes clear, is a deep connection to community and the natural world. William Powers’s description of the search for that life in a small Bolivian town is often inspiring, sometimes tear-jerking, and always thought-provoking.”
— Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of Local Futures

[LM Huffman · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. I really tried with this book, as I liked his previous work, New Slow City, I liked the idea of this one, and it's hard for me to give up on a book. However, the longer I kept with it, the angrier I grew, at the sense of entitlement the author has that he should just be allowed to go to another country and do whatever the heck he wants without any opposition from said country. The world he is supposedly reinventing in the image of sustainability, community and family is a artificial one. How is it sustainable to have his family fly back and forth to the US, and to invite friends and students to do so? How is it a community when the Bolivians are making it more and more apparent that they view people from the US and Europe less as comrades and more as invaders? How is it creating more time with your family when your wife goes home to do actual important work at the UN but brings your toddler with her to put in daycare for 11 hours a day while you traipse around the jungle getting drunk with the latest friend who flew in? Ugh. The white savior complex just got to be too much. It would have been far better for his family, his own country, Bolivia and the global environment if he'd just stayed home altogether.

[David Rudin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his latest book Powers goes to a small town in Bolivia where he and his wife and newborn daughter attempt to live a sustainable life on five acres. The town they choose has an interesting mix of ex-pats from all over the globe and Bolivians.
Powers and family work on creating a permaculture inspired homestead, complete with orchard and adobe home made from native materials. The real story though is about his relationships with the local community, both alternatively minded and traditionalists. Their effort to create a sustainable community plays out against the backdrop of ever encroaching western capitalism.
It is an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes difficult story of trying to create community while staying connected to the earth.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a bit rambling but its topic hit home. How can we, privileged first world people find a way to live sustainably in community? Do other cultures hold the clue to a better way? One family goes to Bolivia to be part of a thriving community that holds promise. To learn together to live a good enough modern life. An interesting read.

[Luc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank-you Bill for a great read. I love how you write with vulnerability. I'm lucky enough to know some of the places and people you wrote about here, and to see them through your eyes and feel them through your heart is a delight and a journey. I think that your journey rings true for many of us, and I appreciate you doing your part in your way - it encourages me to do mine.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good Lord. What pretentious navel-gazing.