David Suzuki's Green Guide, David Suzuki & David R. Boyd

You can certainly tell this was co-written as it is not nearly as "doom and gloom" as I expect from David Suzuki.  I haven't read much of his recently, so that could just be baggage I'm carrying.

The short review: good book. recommended whether you are wanting to come up to speed on environmental issues or whether you consider yourself deeply rooted in the cause.

I can't imagine anyone not already in the choir picking it up to read given the title.  I like the approach taken in Your Money or Your Life.  They wrote a personal finances book that, at its heart, is an environmental book.

I really liked the approach they took in the book.  They singled out a couple of key areas of everyone's life: Home, Food, Travel.  For each of these topics they covered three things.  First, they reviewed the state of things, issues, statistics, etc.  Then they offered up a few optimistic examples of how specific people and organizations have addressed the current and future state of things.  They then close with a very specific list of things you can personally do.  Some of them were simple enough that I could do them while taking a brief pause from the book (started a hazardous waste bag for batteries and such [which I will replace with rechargeable as they wear out], lowered the water heater setting, checked the house for water leaks to name a few, reduce the number of baths I take).  At the other end of the spectrum, some of them were requests to assess where you live and work.

In the end, I was left feeling pretty optimistic which is not generally the case when I read an environmental book.  It's not that I think the masses are any more intelligent than I did before reading the book, but I do feel like my actions matter.  That is an (the?) essential element for any progress on environmental issues.

Well done.