‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ by Daniel Christian Wahl (Reviews)
Since ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ was published by Triarchy Press in the UK, it has gained international acclaim and has been read and recommended by people from all over the world.
Here is a selection of some of the reviews, starting with the two introductions to the book:
David W. Orr was a key influence on my life and work. Here is his introduction to the book:
Graham Leicester was kind enough to invite me to become a member of the International Futures Forum in 2009 and since then I have had the opportunity to learn from the many wise elders this group of hopefuls for the future of humanity brings together — among them Tony Hodgson, Bill Sharpe, Ian Page, Bob Horn, and many others. Here is Graham’s introduction to my book:
My former PhD supervisor, Prof. Seaton Baxter, has been among the most influential and supportive of my mentors and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for his gentle leadership. I intend to pay it forward for many years to come.
I met Fritjof Capra at Schumacher College in 2002, during my Masters in Holistic Science. His books had been a major influence on me enrolling in this course. Over the years since then I have had the good fortune of meeting him on a more or less regular basis and every time I learned so much from him. Fritjof offering a short endorsement for the back-cover of my book must have certainly helped as an endorsement that made people pick up the book and read it.
Another huge influence on me enrolling for a masters at Schumacher College was the work of Joanna Macy. In 2003 I met her for the first time, as I was facilitating a 11 day intensive in the Work that Reconnects with Joanna and my friend Bodhi at a new course centre in the mountains North of Madrid. It was Joanna who helped me take the decision to do my PhD. Her review and endorsement of my book alone would have made the effort of writing it worth while. She is one of the wisest and most fierce and compassionate human beings I have ever met and will remain a beacon and inspiration for the rest of my life.
When in the run-up to COP15 in Kopenhagen, Bill McKibben — who I had met a few months earlier in the ‘green room’ at Bioneers — got in touch to ask me to help 350.org connect with key agents of positive change around Europe, I gladly introduced him to people I knew from my time at Schumacher College, the Findhorn Foundation, the Centre for Alternative Technology, and my involvement with the Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education. I am so grateful he took the time to offer me a little endorsement statement of my book when I asked him for this favour last year.
Hazel Henderson and I have not yet met in person, but we have been in a number of online forums and e-mail lists over the last 10 years and have exchanged a few e-mails. I feel deeply honoured that she took the time to read my book, included in the recommended book list on her Ethical Markets platform and offered this little endoresoment:
Allan Combs and I met when I invited him to come to Findhorn and offer a course and public lecture at Findhorn College, while I was working as the Academic Director of the college. We met again during my visit to the California Institute of Integral Studies and had a wonderful day of deep conversations as he showed me around San Francisco. His work on consciousness remains among the clearest expressions of this elusive topic I have come accross.
Maddy Harland and I go back a very long way. I still remember visiting her and Tim at the Sustainability Centre in East Meon in 2000 when I was still working on setting up an environmental education centre and ecovillage in Southern Spain. We have reconnected many times since then, in particular through both our involvement with Gaia Education and more recently through the Commonwealth Secretariat’s initiative on Regenerative Development to Reverse Climate Change. In 2010 when I organized a Bioneers conference at Findhorn, I invited Maddy and Tim to be speakers. They have done so much to inspire so many to be part of the solution rather than the problem.
Albert Bates is ‘the real McCoy’ — I know few people who have demonstrated such commitment to working for a brighter future for humanity and life on Earth for quite so long with so much dedication. No surprise that he gained a Right Livelihood Award for his work 37 years ago. He has not stopped since! We know each other through the Global Ecovillage Network. In 2011 I taught on and co-organized an Ecovillage Design Education course on Mallorca which Albert contributed his wisdom to. In 2012 he shared a room during Rio+20. In 2016 I got him invited to the Reversing Climate Change initiative that the Cloudburst Foundation was creating for the Commonwealth Secretariat. I hope to have many more opportunities to work with and learn from this wise elder of the movement.
If you don’t know who John Denis Liu is, then you better start searching for his name and watch his wonderful documentaries on youtube. John has been studying large scale ecosystems regeneration for over 30 years and documented his studies as a film-maker. He now works with the Commonland Foundation and has initiated the inspiring ‘Ecosystems Restoration Camp’ movement that is gaining traction with the first camp taking shape in Southern Spain. I am delighted that John has invited me onto the advisory council of the Ecosystems Restoration Camp Foundation and hope work with him more closely over the coming years. Every time I re-read his review of my book I am touched in my core.
I knew of Jonathon Porritt and his work as founder of the UK Green Party and later Forum for the Future long before I met him in person. We are both sharing the honour of having been invited to the Findhorn Foundation Fellowship and so I had a few opportunities to have long conversations with Jonathon about the future we hope to see and do our bit to bring into being. It has been hugely helpful of him to take the time to write a review of my book for Resurgence. I have republished it on Medium with some responses to his questioning of my political realism that follows so very supportive remarks about my book and work.
Every since I first met Nancy Roof, the founding editor of KOSMOS Journal, I felt deeply supported by this remarkable elder. I remember when I walked up to her for the first time at the ‘2020 Climate Leadership Campaign’ meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 2009, I was about to introduce myself and she beamed at me: “Oh, you are Daniel Wahl. I have heard so much about you and loved what I have read of your writing.” I met her again at the ‘New Story Summit’ at Findhorn which I helped to co-initiate with some of the Findhorn Fellows and she immediately offered to publish some excerpts of my book on the KOSMOS website and a review in the journal.
Another elder who has been a deep influence on me personally and through his work and life’s example is Satish Kumar. We first met in 2001 at Schumacher College and have crossed paths many times since. In 2003 Satish came to the opening of a new course centre in Spain that I was working with at the time. In 2008 we offered a course together at Findhorn College, on ‘Journeys through inner and outer landscapes’ — walking different paths in Morayshire with ‘pilgrim’s attitude’. Since I move to Mallorca, I have seen Satish once a year when he comes to speak at the annual ‘Tierra, Alma y Sociedad’ event organized by my friend Guillem Ferrer. Just recently I saw him during a short course at Schumacher College that I co-taught with Bill Sharpe.
David Lorimer and I are both members of the International Futures Forum and have spent some time together on the invitation of Lady Cawdor at Cawdor Castle (once owned by the original MacBeth) together with Rupert Sheldrake, Margaret Colquahoun, John P. Milton and others to explore the theme of ‘healing the earth’. David wrote a wonderful review of my book in the Network Review of the Scientific and Medical Network in the UK:
Another recently joined member of the International Futures Forum is Prof. Ioan Fazey, who I first met when he was still at the University of St. Andrews and brought a group of students to the Findhorn ecovillage through a fieldstudy programme I had set up through Findhorn College. He since become the director of the Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience at the University of Dundee and has started working a lot with Tony Hodgson and Bill Sharpe to bring H3Uni and IFF methods to his students and colleagues around the world. I am delighted his Masters in Sustainability is using my book as a core textbook.
Among the more unusual reviewer of my book is Robert Steele, who I met at the New Story Summit, after inviting him after reading his excellent book ‘The Open Source Everything Manifesto’. Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that an ex-CIA operative and the person who built up the Marine Core Intelligence Service in the 1980s would end up reviewing my book, let alone give it quite such a glowing 6-star review on Amazon. Robert is one of the most prolific reviewers on Amazon in 96 categories of non-fiction.
Recently, Julie Morley from the California Institute of Integral Studies published a wonderful review of my book in ‘World Futures: Journal for New Paradigm Research’:
The regenerative design framework proposed by Bill Reed and his colleagues from the Regenesis Group has been a central piece in the puzzle as I was crafting the format and flow of the book. I am deeply grateful to Bill for his endorsement and have enjoyed working with and learning from him, Ben Haggard and Pamela Mang since the book came out.
… I could continue. All these reviews have been gifts and encouragement to keep writing an publishing. I hope that if you find the time to read the book, you will also review it on Amazon or GoodReads and share your opinion with me and other potential readers. It means so much to an author to learn what inspired, what worked and what did not work, what people have been looking for and found and what they feel might help them in stepping more fully into their own agency as co-creators of diverse regenerative cultures everywhere.
Here are some more reviews on my publishers website:
In case you did not know, the big online sellers like Amazon are forcing publishers into massive discounts that mean that both the editor/publisher and the author see a lot less for their work, compared to when people buy directly through the publisher.
Here is the link to buy my book through Triarchy Press if you live in Europe, and if your are in the USA, Candada or Latin America you can order it through the International Specialized Book Service here.
The book is available as an e-pub pdf or on kindle through Amazon in all countries they operate in (this link is for the US, but you can go to .co.uk, .de, .jp, .es and many other national amazon sites).
If you want to buy the book through an organization that you feel is particularly worth supporting, here are some options:
Fellowship of Intentional Communities Bookstore
or you can get it through:
Akademika in Norway
Booko in Australia
Rahva Raamat in Estonia
ZCart in India
Booktopia in Australia
Fishpond in New Zealand
…
