Very thought provoking on how your actions and daily routines effect the environment. Splits up how you impact the environment into areas such as household energy, your mode of transportation, how you buy goods, and how well you put your ideals into practice. Also give references for more information on each area and ways to decrease your impacts.

I found this to be a great resource for me as I sold one house and purchased another, all without the use of a realtor. It has good information about hidden things to look for and helpful hint about making your house look as attractive to home buyers. Since it goes over both buying and selling, you can cross reference to make sure you know about hidden costs and inspections that might be necessary. I would suggest it as a first stop (but not last) if you are thinking about buying or selling a home.

This book is fine for what it is, a compendium of information about buying 'green', from toys to pet supplies.

Its premise is wrong, however -- buying green is only the thinnest of band-aids atop our monstrous systemic problems of overconsumption and non-sustainable production. I dislike this brand of recycling effort because it shifts responsibility for the environment almost entirely upon the consumer. Certainly it is laudable to be responsible and aware of environmental issues in our buying choices, but the fact of the matter is that perhaps 1% or 2% of waste is directly generated by consumers. The remainder is generated during various production and transportation processes leading up to the sale. Trying to wade through thousands of products in an attempt to buy green simply obscures that key fact. Naturally that's in the interest of corporations themselves, who are all for having municipalities and private citizens bear the brunt of recycling labor and expense -- yet another cost of production successfully externalized out into the community.

This kind of book should simply be unnecessary -- ALL products should be 'green'. It is simply common sense: our resources are finite, but our systems are geared toward infinitely-growing production and consumption. Clearly, our systems must change such that the great majority of products are sustainably produced.

This is a great collection of information about maps and charts for almost every purpose, on land or sea or in the air. Many, many kinds of maps are represented here, together with information about places to get them.

The book has a so-called "perfect binding" (signatures are glued together, not sewn). And, since the pages are very heavy because they are coated with clay in order to be glossy, sections of the book tend to pull loose from the spine. A long-lived reference work such as this one ought to be sewn together, not glued.