Publications
Center for Whole Communities aims to publish journals, essays, and books that inspire, inform, and empower people about the essential role land plays in all of our lives. We seek to share stories about people’s connections with land — their unique struggles, histories, loves, and longings — that will turn others toward the important work of protecting our earth, restoring our commons, and building healthy, just communities. We aim to publish books that are powerful, motivating, and practical tools to strengthen and broaden the practice of building healthy, whole communities in this country and make us more responsive to the pressing social and ecological issues of the day.
For more information about our books or our publishing program, please contact our Director of Publications, .
You can find our books in local bookstores nationwide. If you choose to buy online, please follow our links below and Center for Whole Communities will receive part of the purchase price.
Books for Sale
NEW! Entering This Land: A History of Knoll Farm
Entering this Land tells the story of Knoll Farm from ancient geologic time through the history of settlement of this mountain valley – first by plants, then animals, and then humans – and finally through its 200-year journey as a farmstead and refuge. Whether you are familiar with Knoll Farm or not, you’ll find its story both common and unusual, familiar and singular. We offer this story as a record of the past and as a hope for the future, as a conversation about what it means to live with place, and all that it embodies. Illustrated with beautiful historical and contemporary photographs.
What is a Whole Community: A Letter to Those Who Care for and Restore the Land
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In this new essay, written as a letter to the conservation movement, Peter Forbes asks those who love and care for the land to see that the world is changing and that conservationists risk being left behind. Every conservation organization in America today has both moral and strategic reasons to re-think why and for whom they are doing their work. Peter Forbes asks the conservation movement to rise to today's challenges with new approaches, new tools, and a new vision for success, and to look at these challenges as opportunities to see beyond the way things are; as a chance for re-invention."
Coming to Land in a Troubled World
The present rate of devastation to our natural world and to healthy lives is unprecedented, and accelerating. In the context of this rapid cycle of development and destruction, the work of conserving land, species, and ways of life is more urgent and vital than ever before. But what does it mean, in these times of progress, to truly conserve land and community life? And why is this conservation so important if we are to heal the divisions in our culture and ourselves, to change our patterns of consumption, and to reverse the fate of our earth?
In three powerful essays, three influential writers and thinkers—Scott Russell Sanders, Peter Forbes and Kathleen Dean Moore—explore these questions, giving us new insights into the promise of land conservation in our present world. Through its deep examination of the value of land to our culture and our souls, Coming to Land In a Troubled World becomes a meditation on reconciliation and restoration, love and loss, wholeness and innovation, fairness and community. It gives us new approaches and new hope to work to heal the great divisions and losses we see around us each day.
The Great Remembering: Further Thoughts on Land, Soul, and Society
The Great Remembering is an activist's exploration of what land means to our culture. In three chapters, "The Extinction of Experience," "Dissent and Defiance," and "Building a New Commons," the author traces the roots of our disconnection from place and from meaningful stories about our lives. He discusses what he terms the "ethics of enough"—the growing trend to slow down and place the quality of our experiences over the quantity of our possessions. It is through preserving land and rebuilding the relationship between land and people, he argues, that our culture can not only restore natural habitats, but revitalize human communities as well.
Our Land, Ourselves: Readings on People and Place
Our Land, Ourselves is a collection of diverse readings on the many themes of people and place — themes such as the protection of wilderness and the idea of the wild, the nature of home, the purpose of work, and the meaning of community. These voices suggest a new way of viewing land conservation as the process of building values and positively shaping human lives.
The Story Handbook: Language and Storytelling for Conservationists
In The Story Handbook, contributors Tim Ahern, William Cronon, John Elder, Peter Forbes, Barry Lopez, and Scott Russell Sanders help us think about the power of stories of people and place, and how those stories can advance the work of land conservation toward creating meaningful change in our culture.
As Trust for Public Land president, Will Rogers, writes in his introduction, "true success in our work means moving land conservation out of the ‘emergency room’ of last-ditch efforts....To do this we will need to help create a fundamental change in how our society thinks about and treats land; we will need to nurture the flowering of a new land ethic. Stories may be our best way to get there."
Multimedia Publications
Healthy Land, Whole Communities
This DVD presentation made from one of Peter Forbes’ keynote talks includes his favorite land and people stories and strongest arguments for the role land plays in creating whole communities. It focuses particularly on sustainable farming and local food. It also includes beautiful photography of the landscapes that have inspired this work. A good choice for introducing others to these stories and concepts.
The Yurt Talks: Rethinking the Promise of Land Conservation
This 2-CD set features Torri Estrada, Danyelle O’Hara and Peter Forbes in discussion around the need to understand the power of land to us an individuals as a step toward understanding the power of land to our culture. This is the closest thing we have to reproducing the dialogues that happen among participants of our Whole Thinking Retreats.
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Building a New Movement: Conservation and Community Engagement
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Conservation finds itself at a crossroads, where changing demographic, population pressures and climate change are causing leaders to rethink how conservation should focus its efforts, and for whom. Whole Communities is beginning a deep inquiry into how the crossroads is being mapped around the country, gathering the hopeful stories, relating the challenges, and providing resources to nurture positive solutions. This pdf is the first, partial draft of that study.