Customer Rating:  
Summary: Permaculture or PhD Dissertation on Systems Theory?
Comment: I was looking to expand my understanding of permaculture with Holmgren's latest work, where he seeks to "directly explain the principles of permaculure" (xi). However, I did not find Holmgren's presentation of permaculture to be useful or that coherent.
It's not just that I found Holmgren's prose to be extremely wordy and difficult to follow, often going back and forth between different ideas, but his writing seemed to overly focus on validating his take on Systems Theory where everything is quantified in terms of some abstract idea of "energy." This supposed all-encompassing worldview leads Holmgren to make some grandiose generalizations, like a "Maximum Power Law" which shows that "comfort and excessive protection from challenges and competition can lead to self-satisfied, lazy and eventually dysfunctional behavior" (pg. 56). Huh? So traditional hunter-gatherers who cooperated together to produce stable, sustainable food systems were lazy? Holmgren doesn't explain further. How about the even more absurd and equally unqualified statement that because fossil fuels have a low "embodied energy," they are not "bad, inefficient, and immoral.. [but] are very useful" (pg. 50). What?! Has Holmgren ever seen the coal mines or oil refineries in his own country? It's a hugely intensive process that seems anything but "beyond sustainable" to me.
I'm not sure who Holmgren's intended audience is, but "Principles and Pathways" seemed like an abstract PhD dissertation. His sweeping generalizations, buttressed by his Systems Theory that quantifies and then can supposedly explain everything, make him come off as arrogant at times. Maybe some people like this detached academic writing, but it's not really my cup of tea.
I found "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway to be a very accessible introduction and overview to permaculture with lucid examples. I've also begun to read some works by Bill Mollison and found them to be inspiring and easier to grasp. While the so-called "bible" of permaculture, "A Designers' Manual," remains college textbook-like expensive, many of Mollison's other writings can be found online for free.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good information but hard to read
Comment: Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
I found this book incredibly hard to read.
I couldn't wrap my head around Holmgren's style of prose, and the layout and ideas in this book. It is wordy, meandering, and confusing - and I found myself lost in chapter after chapter as Holmgren's explanations went way over my head, leaving me confused and befuddled. This would not be a good introduction to permaculture, and no good at all as a teaching book or textbook.
I wish I could have given this book a higher rating than two stars, but I simply wouldn't recommend it to any but the diehard permaculture enthusiast who feels s/he must have every book on the subject in her/his possession.
I feel that Holmgren has somehow missed the simplicity of permaculture and become bogged down in unnecessary complexity, taking his readers with him. He presents a neat little set of diagrams, but I lost touch with what to do with them early on, and it was all downhill from there. Maybe the book improved towards the end, but as I never finished it I shall never know. Which is a shame.
Holmgren has done wonderful work in the field of permaculture and sustainability. His record in the field is commendable. I feel sad I can't recommend this book. I hope his next venture is more readable.
From now on, I'll stick with Mollison (the father and founder of permaculture) whose books I have found to be all incredibly readable, intelligent, and action-provoking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More numbers, less wisdom please!
Comment: In purchasing this book, I'd hoped to start learning the strategies and techniques for transforming a piece land into an environmentally sustainable legacy for future generations. Perhaps, I misunderstood the book's description when it specified that it would teach me the foundations of permaculture design and the 12 permaculture design principles.
Instead of providing a useful guide to designing a more sustainable environment for someone who wants to change their lifestyle for their own philosophical and ethical beliefs, the book takes one on 277 page New Age ramble. Rather than offering sound scientific reasons why permaculture offers a reasonable path through climate change and likely energy declines, the author offers platitudes and dubious claims.
I was bounced from preferences for traditional cultures (never mind traditions like female circumcision or traditional building methods that collapse in earthquakes) to citations of Hari Krishna practices as something to emulate to anti-patriarchal graphs and ending with a profound sense of disappointment. Yes, Mr. Holmgren, you can be a male Western scientific materialist and still want to create a sustainable environment and society for your children.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Empowering
Comment: Reading this book, although in the beginning a bit of a dense and sluggish read, was a major pivotal moment for me. Holmgren presents a visionary perspective and context of humanity's position, provides profound and thought provoking discourse on the underlying philosophies and patterns of permaculture design, and projects an image of an inspiring future and a path to get there with confidence.
Once I got to the second half of the book, the pace picked up and I felt positively engaged right through to the end. It has supplied me with valuable tools and concepts which I use and refer to almost daily, as I am confronted by the bull-headed, sometimes irrational, sometimes blatantly parasitic structures humanity has surrounded itself with.
But Homgren's greatest gift to me, from the end of the book, was his argument for not needing to denigrate our forebears' roles in the situation we find ourselves in today; especially as permaculture design provides us with some of the key tools of thought that will empower us in todays times of monstrous change. This really helped me to release any stress I was creating around blame, freeing up that mental space to be employed in creative problem solving.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very intellectual book
Comment: This is a philosophical treatise on the underpinnings of permaculture. Not a gardening book as such, altho examples of gardening and landscaping are used to illustrate the theories. I found it enjoyable, but not light reading. I would reccommend it, if you have an intellectual craving for deep ecological understanding.
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