Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

Transition Culture has moved

I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.

Archive for “Book Reviews” category

Showing results 11 - 15 of 41 for the category: Book Reviews.


18 Feb 2011

A second review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’

Here’s another review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’, this time from the latest edition of Permaculture Magazine:

It’s nearly three years since I received a copy of The Transition Handbook and was inspired to become involved in the movement. Much has happened since then both in terms of the way Transition has developed and in the wider world of global economics and environmental concerns. So it was with great interest that I read Rob Hopkins’ PhD thesis (progenitor of the Transition model). 

Read more»

Discussion: Comments Off on A second review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’

Categories: Book Reviews, Localisation, Research on Transition, Resilience


9 Feb 2011

A Review of ‘Localisation and Resilience’ by Frank Kaminski

Localisation and Resilience at the Local Level: The Case of Transition Town Totnes (Devon, UK)
By Rob Hopkins
475 pp. University of Plymouth, Devon, UK – Oct. 2010. £15.00; available only in PDF at Transitionculture.org.

For several years groups of innovative, environmentally conscious people worldwide have been part of a social change movement called Transition. It strives to create relocalized communities that are resilient to the looming climate and energy crises, and in which “the future with less oil could be preferable to the present.”

Read more»


13 Dec 2010

13 Transition-related(ish) books you might like to snuggle up with this Christmas….

I haven’t done this for a while, so I thought it might be good to do a round up of some of the more influential and inspirational books that have passed across my bedside table over the last 6 months.  In terms of books you might choose to offer people over the next few weeks’ festive period, there is of course no beating the ever-expanding Transition Books series (still time to order before Christmas), but here is a collection of 13 titles to inform, inspire, fascinate, entertain and enlighten (also please note the Amazon-free nature of the links provided….).  Any books you’d like to recommend?

Read more»

Discussion: 9 Comments

Categories: Book Reviews


1 Nov 2010

The Environmental Movement in Ireland: a postscript

I have just been looking at the online version (which is pretty restrictive, but you get the general idea) of Liam Leonard’s new book ‘The Environmental Movement in Ireland’.  It offers a very well researched overview of the evolution of the green movement politically in Ireland, the rise of protest culture through campaigns such as The Glen of the Downs roads protest, the Rossport 5 and the various anti-incineration and anti-nuclear campaigns.  As such, it is a very detailed and comprehensive look at those aspects of the green presence in Ireland, but it strikes me that one key part of that story is missing.  So far as I could tell, there is nothing that documents the movement that was developing in parallel which focused on solutions, on practically modelling solutions, often at great personal and financial cost.  This morning then, I want to take a stab at what that chapter might have included.

Read more»


15 Sep 2010

What Can Communities Do? My Contribution to the Post Carbon Reader

My section of Post Carbon Institute’s ‘Post Carbon Reader: managing the 21st century’s sustainability crises’, due out in October, has just been published online.  You can download the pdf of my part here, and can see all the previous pdfs that have been published so far here.   For a sense of the final book, you can see the contents page here.  It’s going to be a great book. Here is an short extract of my piece:

Read more»