E-raamat: Field Guide to Appropriate Technology

The field guide begins with foundational topics (grant writing, fundraising, and marketing) to support implementations of "appropriate technology," defined as that which is small-scale, efficient, environmentally sound, labor intensive, and easy-to-maintain. Articles of two-to-eight pages on particular technologies are gathered under larger headings of energy, growing and raising food, health, construction, transportation, household technologies, water, tools, and other technologies, and all articles are supplemented with a list of further readings. Topics include raising ducks, bamboo-reinforced concrete, candlemaking, and semiconductors. The 60 contributors come from inside and outside academe, with quite a few of the professoriat like the editors hailing from Brown University. Intended readers are those from the (over-)industrialized world, intending to assist in less-industrialized parts of the world, but the book is valuable to anyone interested in simpler technologies. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)