William S. Coperthwaite

I love those Mother-Earth type books where people are self-supporting, growing their own food, making their own clothes and tools and houses and furniture and stuff, living off the grid - you get the picture. Now, I've lived my whole life in the city, so this is not the kind of person I am in real life - it's just some weird fantasy of mine to thumb my nose at the world and go off and live in the woods. If I ever get the chance to do it, I want to know HOW. That is the book I thought I was getting here.

It is beautifully photographed, and shows a man, living in a "yurt" (actually a large round house with a pointed roof) in Vermont, carving stuff out of wood, children poking around in gardens, brightly colored produce piled in primitive baskets. There is even a pattern for making your own axe. *sigh* I wanted to know how he does it, so I can do it, too, should the opportunity ever arise.

What I got was a dissertation on his world view. I was put off by the opening paragraph. After a lengthy introduction by someone else, Coperthwaite finally takes the floor with these comments: "We need to build a society in which everyone wins. Loser are not good for business. The cost of having so many losers is tremendous in terms of happiness; in dollars for heath care, famine relief, and prisons; in suffering and in wars - in wasted human potential."

Now, I am not quibbling with anything the man is actually saying here. I just don't want to hear it NOW. In this book, I want tips on organic gardening and instructions for building a pen to contain my goats so I can make cheese. I'm not interested in reading about how to build a perfect society - especially HIS ideas of a perfect society. He goes on to talk about education, family life, asthetics, the necessity of work, violence, material wealth, and the benefits of rural living. It all came across as very condecending - he has the problems of the world all figured out, and all the rest of us need to do is listen to him.

This is all strangely interspersed with sidebars covering such topics as how to handle a 2-man saw to cut down a tree alone, building a chair, making toys, and the axe pattern mentioned above. Almost every page has quotations from people including Henry David Thoreau, Kahlil Gibran, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson (lots of Dickinson), Mortimer Adler, Mahatma Gandhi, Dwight D Eisenhower, Tolstoy, and dozens of others.

I realized early on that this is not the book it looks like. I was happier looking at the pretty pictures and reading the sidebars and just skimming the text, but he still managed to get my back up. When I want a sermon I go to church. I didn't appreciate it from this guy. I gave the book 1-1/2 stars, just because it is so attractive to look at.… (mehr)