About Daruma · Book Reviews
Permaculture book reviews.
Every Permaculture Design Certificate at Daruma introduces a dozen or more reference books along the way, most of them living in the library on site. By the second or third day, students usually have a to read list a year long, so more than a decade ago we started building short book reviews into the course itself.
A rapid, honest second opinion.
There is rarely enough time on a PDC to read everything on the list, but there is often a quiet hour in the evening. Our instruction team matches a book to a student's own interests and background, then rapidly assesses it and shares a short review with the group. Some enjoy their book enough to prepare a longer presentation, and every review is kept in the student resource files at the end of the course.
It is a more personal second opinion than searching reviews online. Years later, finding a review you wrote yourself, or one a classmate shared, tends to bring back the whole camaraderie of the course.
Browse the libraryTwo reviews from recent PDCs.
Full write-ups from the student resource files, shared here for anyone building their own reading list.
The Transition Handbook
Rob Hopkins' handbook on community-led energy descent: practical steps toward local currencies and resilient towns, reviewed from a PDC reading list.
Read the review →
Ecological and General Systems
Howard T. Odum's 1983 introduction to systems ecology, the theoretical groundwork David Holmgren credits as critical to permaculture itself.
Read the review →Start your own reading list.
The shelves sit inside Mosaic School, open to course participants throughout a stay. Most of these reviews were written during the nine-day Permaculture Design Course; if you are new to all of this, the two-day introduction is the gentler door in.
Full catalogue: LibraryThing ↗