I'm a GenXer and have several of these books (all bought used of course) including Shelter, Living on the Earth (one of my favourite books ever), The Massage Book and the classic must-have Tassajara Bread Book. I've always felt like I was too young in the 70's to fully appreciate it.
I remember my parents giving one of my brothers the Whole Earth Catalog, when he was maybe eleven, around 1970. The rest of us were envious but he shared! Still surprises me that my parents picked that out but I'm glad they did.
In the winter of 1968 I was 20 sitting at a zentemple in Kyoto and Gary Snyder had just passed through having the first copy of the WEC catalog with him,
I’m new on substack and I have a hard time typing on my phone, so I didn’t get to finish my little story on this.
So when I got back to the states, I started emerging into the counter culture big time and the catalogue was a catalyst. He showed me that there were plenty of people out there doing incredible and thoughtful ways of living and sharing that. I ended up building an elliptical dome 30 feet diameter on the Irish Hills of San Luis Obispo County all hand done no electric tools. That accomplishment set me up for what else is possible all thanks to the Dome Book. I had never done anything like that before in my life.
Ongoingly all of the publications that I subscribe to and received carried me through many a day and now I have a collection of them still. What does one do?
I would like to share these with those millennials coming up , but I have no outlet that I know of. I want them in the right hands.
The local college and university won’t accept them because they are not a full collection.
I managed to buy/obtain a copy of the Catalog in the late 60's or early 70's (cant' quite remember) which was quite a difficult thing to do then as I am in Liverpool, UK. I'm not sure how I managed to get hold of a copy but I remember being thrilled to get my hands on one.
wanders and is still a source for interesting reads . I have the first one and the bigger one with full color cover. I had a copy of Shelter and it never returned back from last person loaned to. Also an eye opener with gorgeous illustrations.
So beautifully antithetical to the designed obsolescence ubiquitous today.
I discovered my Dad's collection of books from the early 70s as a young teenager in the early 90s. These include most or all of The Whole Earth Catalogs (for sure the very first one), Domebook II, and Shelter. I was just so inspired by them, and even built myself an 8', tube frame dome at age 15.
I still have The Last Whole Earth Catalog April - May 1971 / The Updated Last Whole Earth Catalog May 1974 and the Whole Earth Epilog 1st edition September 1974. I wish that I could find a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog to compare. ♥♥ these books...had them since new.
In my opinion, the Epilog was the best one. From that point on, they got unwieldy. I thought the one with the novel interspersed throughout was a big mistake. They just got too big to be useful.
I'm just in that millennial category on the young end. I found your work through Foster, but quickly realized that the section in 'Shelter' dedicated to Planetarium Domes was very relevant to my own PhD research into planetaria culture. I've referenced it quite a few times in my work, and my own copy of 'Shelter' had been part of the public library system in Cork, Ireland, for decades when it was retired and I bought it.
As a fan of your books (have nearly a dozen), I have been inspired to "think outside of the box" with my 20 years experience at Burning Man and camping throughout California. My other passion is space travel, so in the first book I wrote, "Creature Comforts in Space," I used ideas from the shelter books as analogies for day-to-day living off-world. Would love to meet you and give you a copy. Here is the book website (https://retro-futurist.com).
I'm a GenXer and have several of these books (all bought used of course) including Shelter, Living on the Earth (one of my favourite books ever), The Massage Book and the classic must-have Tassajara Bread Book. I've always felt like I was too young in the 70's to fully appreciate it.
I remember my parents giving one of my brothers the Whole Earth Catalog, when he was maybe eleven, around 1970. The rest of us were envious but he shared! Still surprises me that my parents picked that out but I'm glad they did.
In the winter of 1968 I was 20 sitting at a zentemple in Kyoto and Gary Snyder had just passed through having the first copy of the WEC catalog with him,
I’m new on substack and I have a hard time typing on my phone, so I didn’t get to finish my little story on this.
So when I got back to the states, I started emerging into the counter culture big time and the catalogue was a catalyst. He showed me that there were plenty of people out there doing incredible and thoughtful ways of living and sharing that. I ended up building an elliptical dome 30 feet diameter on the Irish Hills of San Luis Obispo County all hand done no electric tools. That accomplishment set me up for what else is possible all thanks to the Dome Book. I had never done anything like that before in my life.
Ongoingly all of the publications that I subscribe to and received carried me through many a day and now I have a collection of them still. What does one do?
I would like to share these with those millennials coming up , but I have no outlet that I know of. I want them in the right hands.
The local college and university won’t accept them because they are not a full collection.
Can anybody help me on this ?
What happened to the dome?
I managed to buy/obtain a copy of the Catalog in the late 60's or early 70's (cant' quite remember) which was quite a difficult thing to do then as I am in Liverpool, UK. I'm not sure how I managed to get hold of a copy but I remember being thrilled to get my hands on one.
WEC has launched many edifying
wanders and is still a source for interesting reads . I have the first one and the bigger one with full color cover. I had a copy of Shelter and it never returned back from last person loaned to. Also an eye opener with gorgeous illustrations.
So beautifully antithetical to the designed obsolescence ubiquitous today.
I discovered my Dad's collection of books from the early 70s as a young teenager in the early 90s. These include most or all of The Whole Earth Catalogs (for sure the very first one), Domebook II, and Shelter. I was just so inspired by them, and even built myself an 8', tube frame dome at age 15.
I still have The Last Whole Earth Catalog April - May 1971 / The Updated Last Whole Earth Catalog May 1974 and the Whole Earth Epilog 1st edition September 1974. I wish that I could find a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog to compare. ♥♥ these books...had them since new.
In my opinion, the Epilog was the best one. From that point on, they got unwieldy. I thought the one with the novel interspersed throughout was a big mistake. They just got too big to be useful.
Is that the one with "D.R.s Trip" by Gurney Norman in it, in a little box at the bottom of each page?
Yep.
Just wonderful
I'm just in that millennial category on the young end. I found your work through Foster, but quickly realized that the section in 'Shelter' dedicated to Planetarium Domes was very relevant to my own PhD research into planetaria culture. I've referenced it quite a few times in my work, and my own copy of 'Shelter' had been part of the public library system in Cork, Ireland, for decades when it was retired and I bought it.
As a fan of your books (have nearly a dozen), I have been inspired to "think outside of the box" with my 20 years experience at Burning Man and camping throughout California. My other passion is space travel, so in the first book I wrote, "Creature Comforts in Space," I used ideas from the shelter books as analogies for day-to-day living off-world. Would love to meet you and give you a copy. Here is the book website (https://retro-futurist.com).