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Internship Reading List

Books that inform our approach to community

Taking Lesson from History

Models of Sustainable Community

These books provide insights into about how three very different communities achieved a high degree of sustainability.

Without Sin: the life and Death of the Oneida Community

    by Spencer Claw


Forgotten Founders: How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy

    by Bruce E. Johansen


Work and Worship Among the Shakers

    by Faith Andrews


Technology and Community

"It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it ... And then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one."
    -Nancy Jack Todd,
      author of A Safe and Sustainable World

These books go into detail about some of the key systems we're working on. Including passive-solar construction, integrated aquaponic greenhouses (sometimes refered to as "arks"), and the rediscovery of organic, regenerating village economies.

They are also informative of how groups that focus on building nifty technology often fail because of a lack of investment in the people who make up the community. That's why, in a world where community is constrainted to serve technology, our focus is on creating technology that serves community.

Solviva: How to grow $500,000 on one acre, and Peace on Earth

    by Anna Edey


A Safe and Sustainable World: The Promise Of Ecological Design

    by Nancy Jack Todd


Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

    by William McDonough and Michael Braungart


Visions of Sustainability

Inspiration in works of fiction

"I like the fact that sci-fi is boldly willing to accept that things change. Sci-fi is the genre that considers that children will learn from the mistakes of their parents."
- David Brin

These books describe various visions of how a sustainable society could be created. These and others have served as the source for some of the concepts that have informed Windward's effort to build resilient systems in ways both technical and social.

The caveat given at the top of this page bears repeating here in that many of the intellectually provacative quotes listed in this section are from fictional works, and may or may not represent either the core beliefs of the author or the principles guiding Windward's evolution as an organization.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

    by Robert Heinlein

Looking Backward

    by Edward Bellamy

Herland

    by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Pillars of the Earth

    by Ken Follet