假如没有电灯 - 原生态生活 Better Off : Flipping the Switch on Technology
点此进入淘宝搜索页搜索分類: 图书,进口原版书,科学与技术 Science & Techology ,
作者： Eric Brende著
出 版 社： 音像供货
出版时间： 2004-12-1字数：版次： 1页数： 233印刷时间： 2004/08/01开本：印次：纸张： 胶版纸I S B N ： 9780060570040包装： 精装内容简介
About a decade ago, Brende was pursuing a graduate degree at MIT by studying technology's influence on society, and he reached conclusions that disturbed both him and his faculty mentors. A chance encounter with a "black-hatted man" prompted Brende and his new wife to move to a religious, "Mennonite-type" community that in many respects makes the Amish seem worldly, where he hoped to pare his environment down to "a baseline of minimal machinery" that could sustain human comfort while allowing him to stay off the power grid. (Details about the community, which Brende dubs the "Minimites" in recognition of their austerity, are left intentionally vague so as to preserve their privacy.) The pervasive back-to-basics sentiment will surprise few familiar with others who work this vein, like Bill McKibben and Kirkpatrick Sale, but Brende's nostalgia for a simpler way of life is far from rabid. His rough prose honestly addresses how neighbors in his new community could graciously offer help yet warily view Brende as an intruder; Brende himself was particularly sensitive to perceived slights, and the radical lifestyle shift created a unique set of strains on his new marriage. Though the ending feels a bit rushed, his gentle case for simple living will easily resonate with the converted and may inspire skeptics to grapple more intimately with the issue.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
作者简介
ERIC BRENDE，has degrees from Yale, Washburn University, and MIT, and has received a Citation of Excellence from the National Science Foundation and a graduate fellowship from the Mellon Foundation in the Humanities. At the insistence
of his editor, he now has an e-mail account at the local library but continues to minimize modern technology for himself and his family. Eric and Mary Brende have recently relocated to an old-town section in St. Louis, where Eric makes his living as a rickshaw driver and a soap maker.
目录
Cast of Neighbors
Prologue Taking Orders
Section Ⅰ:Planting
1 Seeds of Discontent
2 Paring Back
3 Lightening Up
4 Artfully Answering Nature
5 The Ram
6 The Missing Refrigerator
7 The Sounds of Silence
Section Ⅱ:Growing
8 Quickening
9 A Church Meeting
10 A Barn Raising
11 The Dating Game
12 Meet the Neighbors
13 Secrets and Politics
14 Heatstroke
15 Weighing the Work
Section Ⅲ:Harvesting
16 As the Pumpkins Turn
17 After the Fall: Even Farmers Get the Blues
18 Birth
19 Husbandry
20 Pulling in the Reins
21 Closing Time
22 Outside, and the Box
Epilogue Recipe for a Leisurely, Laborsaving Life
