The Last Whole Earth Catalogue: Access to Tools

Whole Earth Catalog

by Stewart Brand

"Function:
The WHOLE EARTH CATALOG functions as an evaluation & access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting & where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the CATALOG if it is deemed:
Useful as a tool,
Relevant to independent education,
High quality or low cost,
Not already common knowledge,
Easily available by mail.
Catalog listings are continually revised according to the experience & suggestions of CATALOG users & staff.
Purpose:
We are as gods & might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power & glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma & to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment & share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought & promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG."

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Science, Philosophy, Technology, Sustainability, Classics

448 pages, oversized paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Stewart Brand was a pioneer in the environmental movement in the 60s – his Whole Earth Catalog became the Bible for sustainable living, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. Brand is President of The Long Now Foundation and chairs the foundation's Seminars About Long-term Thinking.

Reviews

[Mario the lone bookwolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

The practical manifesto of one of the founding fathers of DIY, ecology, sustainability, alternative education, economy, and democracy, independence from Big money, abundance, and a better, brighter, fairer future.

To have the smallest ecological footprint by producing most of the essential things needed for living alone or in cooperation with others in sharing economies was always a big thing, it´s how humankind rolled for tens of thousands of years, before agriculture and cities brought the absurd idea that some owned all land and enslaved the people this way by having to work for them because of taxes, interests, debt, or simply torturing them to death if they refused.

By not being part of a self-destructive, illogical, endless exponential growth consumerism cycle, people don´t only find independence by owning land, not lose money by paying rents after the mortgage is acquitted, but find sense and inner meaning by doing things they love, that keep them going, and activate their flow systems. After realizing that close to all products that aren´t reasonable for basic needs, work, creativity, knowledge, or entertainment, are trash, independent communities are closer than ever before to becoming autarchic.

Tribes didn´t have much fancy tech when they wandered through the ice- and warm ages, but the knowledge of the elder, given to the next generation, now lost forever and getting lost each second as the last torchbearers die and indigenous people are forced to leave the stolen land they lived on for thousands of years and vegetate in slums. Hippies and alternative communities of the last century had the one or other technical advantage, but with 3D printers, nano- and biotechnology, and computer science, software, and the internet, the dawn of a new age has begun. Imagine what all that enlightened young specialists will build together and without stupid restrictions and limitations of outdated economic, political, and democratic models.

It speaks for itself that the idea of holism (and publications like the Whole Earth Catalogue) are so extremely underrepresented and ignored, as they show that close to all of our current societal models are bonkers. Talking and thinking too much about it would lead to too many unwanted realizations, understanding interconnections, and finally the truth of the necessity of a post scarcity economy.

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_E...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism

[Timothy Finnegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no more important book in my intellectual and moral history. Stewart Brand and his merry cataloguers created The Whole Earth Catalog in the late 60's and 70's in Northern California; providing new editions into the 80's. Brand was affiliated with Ken Kesey and was, if I remember correctly, a merry prankster WHO WAS ON THE BUS. Using the LL Bean catalog as a model, Brand set forth to create a catalog for those who wished to create an alternative society; those who wished to "get back to the land." By word of mouth it grew and grew, providing wet behind the ear hippies with sources for all sorts of exploration, travel, energy efficient home building, self sufficiency, political and social alternatives, medicine and mostly tools of all sorts. The catalog became the architectonic map and resource for much of my generation. (the cool ones.) My life as a skeptical autodidact began in 1969 when I bought my first catalog in Harvard Square. By the 80's it became the cultural proponent for the personal computer and its potential. I think of the catalog as the precurser to the Internet, the stone age Amazon.com. God bless Stewart Brand.

10/9/2011 From the New York Times Obituary of Steve Jobs:"Decades later he flew around the world in his own corporate jet, but he maintained emotional ties to the period in which he grew up. He often felt like an outsider in the corporate world, he said. When discussing the Silicon Valley’s lasting contributions to humanity, he mentioned in the same breath the invention of the microchip and “The Whole Earth Catalog,” a 1960s counterculture publication.

If he had a motto, it may have come from “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which he said had deeply influenced him as a young man. The book, he said in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005, ends with the admonition “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
“I have always wished that for myself,” he said."

[DoctorM · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Whole Earth Catalog in its various updates was a constant companion all through my junior high and high school days. Yes, okay, the early ones were a bit too hippie-ish, but the lists of...well...everything were always brilliant. Books, tools, ideas, reviews--- such wonderful things to find and think about. A generation and more after it first appeared, still engrossing. Go back and look at the books recommended in the Catalog and think about some of the ideas raised in essays there. Still a useful resource, always a springboard to ideas.

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have my paperback copy from the 70s still

[David Brightbill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the Internet before there was an Internet. Like the web, it provided access to a wide variety of information and tools.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was too young to be a hippie. They were creatures featured in Life Magazine, persons seen in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood. My hair was long by the end of senior year in high school because the Dean of Students, Elbert Smith, told me I was expelled until it was cut and both my dad and me resented this enough to refuse compliance, my readmission facilitated by the fact that I'd been doing volunteer work for the ACLU and knew a lot of willing attorneys. My first pair of bell bottoms weren't acquired until after Dad had his first suit with flaired slacks, a time when they'd become pretty standard. Never had a fringed jacket, wore beads or other jewelry.

I was, however, at age sixteen, somehow, both an existentialist and a neo-Marxist, a precinct captain for Eugene McCarthy and a member of the SDS, an anarcho-syndicalist and a YPSL. I'd tried pot, even smoked heroin, and discovered LSD etc. by the end of high school--the psychedelics making the other stuff seem boring, unchallenging, uninteresting.

In Park Ridge, Illinois "the counterculture" was a disparate group which originally I thought of a three groups, in each of which I had friends. The first were the radical-intellectuals: Marxists, democratic socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, New Lefties and the odd libertarian. The second were the artists. They called themselves, for a summer at least, "the Meek". The third were the wanna-be hippies who affected the attire, listened to acid rock, smoked pot and dropped acid. In addition to what became "us" by virtue of the general community's rejection of what they thought we stood for was a penumbra of other oddballs: closeted gays, Jesus freaks, wanna-be hipsters and this one deaf guy.

The sense of three groups was strong in 1968/69. By 1969/70, however, we were pretty much one group, each with our diverse tendencies, but all with a family feeling towards this amorphous minority, a feeling which extended beyond the borders of our suburb and the time of our lives.

I saw the Whole Earth Catalog as a hippie, commune-living type of publication, as somewhat silly maybe, but then some of my older friends were going off to communes or trying to establish experimental living organizations in Chicago. It was, like Brautigan, like Vonnegut, like Ginsberg, like Ramparts Magazine and C. Wright Mills, something you knew about, looked at, maybe read, something that a bibliophile like me had to own. So I got it--four buck in Old Town's Piper's Alley.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw an article about this book today... It reminded me of living in the early 1970's. I didn't have a lot of possesions back then, but this was a book that I could pick up and read from any page and be entertained for hours. Steve Jobs recently said that "The Whole Earth Catalog was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along".

Along with this book, the other possesions I remember from back in those days were two pairs of Earth shoes, T-shirts, a collection of rock n' roll LP's, my Marantz stereo, my 1949 Dodge, and a few science fiction paperback novels... A simpler time! Wish I still had a copy of the "Last Whole Earth Catalog" with the picture of the blue marble on the cover. It would be fun to read today... Maybe I can find one on eBay.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this, and all the subsequent editions. It was the most educational catalog I'd ever seen, and though I learned from it I never made it "back to the earth." Stewart Brand was a genius, Whole Earth was a mind altering concept, and having the Whole Earth Catalog on your spool table, surrounded by candles, and dopester paraphernalia meant you were totally with it.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just came across this book again in my collection. What a classic resource during my high school/college years. A few years back, a friend found a copy of the edition that I had and gave it to me for my birthday. Full of information and resources that reflect an era.

[Billy Sunday · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before we had the internet, we had this.

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still great after all these years.

[Ilib4kids]

Acclaimed as a extreme good reference book.

We are as gods and we might as well get used to it. So far remotely done power and glory - as via government, big business, formal education, church - has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing - the power of individuals to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own environment, and share the adventure with whoever is interested.

[Greg Sedbrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I happened to get one of the !st copies of this and got all the subsequent - the really last was the MILLENIUM WHOLE EARTH in 1998. I have about a 3000 book library based a lot on it, and I retired at age 42 using a lot of their helpful info.. If you want contact me related to it Greg Sedbrook
sedbrookgr at yahoo

[Gigi Guarino · Rating 5 out of 5]

the BEST

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic reference book. National Book Award for Contemporary Affairs (1972).

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

a wonderful collection of articles, reviews, and product descriptions. I came across this book in my high school years. It transported me (living in the midwest) to the hippie culture of the west coast. I learned a lot about about sustainable technologies and social activism. I heard someone else say this was a bit like google in a paperback book long before google existed. I would agree with this description. This is one of those books that I can't point to a specific change I made, but I can see it's influence in numerous ways in my life.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the day, just browsing this was quite eye-opening and inspiring for an adolescent guy. Opened vistas to numerous new worlds. Don’t be misled by what the ‘details’ about this book say about ‘first published’ — I’ve seen several editions, and each is unique; with the exception of the initial youth-communes alignment, the concept essentially remained but content transmogrified over a decade's time.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of products and services for the sustainable lifestyle that you may never have heard if until you start frequenting whole foods and the food coops. Good first steps, but I would hope most people would eventually move forward and realize that they don't need most of the products in this catalog. Nevertheless, a good reference to look at in a local library; not worth buying.

[MissJessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gosh, what a flash from the past. I spent many an hour in the early days reading from this book, randomly picking pages and carrying on until I got tired out.

I don't necessarily remember doing many of things in the book, but it certainly made all of us "back in the day" want to go and change the world, a little at a time.

Did we? It's hard to know.

[David Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Whole Earth Catalog by the Portola Institute (Penguin Books 1972) (338.4). Also known as "The Hippie Handbook," The Last Whole Earth Catalog is a treasured artifact of the Sixties and perfectly encapsulates the spirit of those turbulent times. This is required reading for every hippie born too late. My rating: 9/10, finished 5/6/72.

[Tommyb]

Reference

[Stranniki · Rating 5 out of 5]

practically everything, an old hippy book

[Pat Obermeier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me back to my youth! Great read for counter culture. A list for everything you need. Still relevant today.