In my first post in this series, I talked about the global collapse that is happening and what to do about it–and as hard as it is, the reasons to keep up the hope and the vision for a better future and paradigm.  As I shared in my first post, what we need to do now, as things are collapsing, is to lean into and create the world we want to create.  But how to do we actually get there? One step at a time, my friends.  In my first post, I outlined the situation as I see it and then shared some resources to help orient our minds and mentally prepare and cultivate mental resilience.   This post assumes that you’ve read the first post, and also, that you are feeling like you are in a place to take a few more steps.  And so today’s topic is: building a good library!

Reskilling and the Need for a Good Library

Avoiding Bad Information in the Age of AI-Generated Drivel. A lot of us use the Internet as our first go-to for information. But, if you’ve been on the internet in the last six months, you are now encountering likely more AI-generated content than actual human-generated content: text, video, and images.  This is dangerous for several reasons: 1) AI routinely hallucinates, meaning that it has a lot less accuracy than a knowledgable human; 2) AI-generated material, such as the summarizes you read at the top of search engines now, is inaccurate as it does not “curate” good information and the AI can’t discern good from bad info; 3) there is so much useless information out there that it can be hard to find what you need.

As one simple example: try using Google to explore something about herbal medicine or medicinal mushrooms that you already know well.  You will find mostly AI-generated drivel (which may be about 60-70% accurate but way oversimplified) at the top of search engines is woefully simplistic and it is drawn not from actual herbal information but from drug pages on herbs.  The first few pages of hits for most herbs are for websites from big hospitals that assume herbs are like pharmaceuticals and don’t actually provide useful information.  This means that without deep digging, you aren’t actually able to find good, nuanced information that could help you use herbs effectively for your specific needs. The Internet was always sketchy for herbal information, but now it is pretty much useless.  There are now herbalism books written fully by AI, with AI-generated photos that are inaccurate.  The same thing can be said of most other things. Be very cautious of what you are finding through search engines.

Now to be clear: there still are a lot of good pockets of information on the Internet but only if you know where to look: places run and curated by humans (e.g. certain Youtube channels, individual websites or blogs, etc).  I would suggest staying away more from random searches and really spend time vetting the person who is presenting the information: who they are, and most importantly, how long they’ve been doing it.  Some of the best information does not have millions of hits, either.(And for the record, I will never use AI to generate my books, posts, artwork or anything else.  I am 100% HUMAN and proud of it! The Druid’s Garden will always be an AI-free space).

The other thing to say about AI-generated drivel and search engines, right now in 2025, is that more and more, we are being fed, led, and our attention is being commanded by screens.  Working to shift your primary information from screens to people and books to learn skills can be a very liberating experience–and it allows you to decide where and how you find information, rather than leaving it up to the big tech companies.  A book doesn’t mediate your experience or direct your attention in the same way that websites do, and you won’t have to be exposed to incessant advertising for crap products either.

This is one of the reasons it is really important to build a good library of actual physical books and learn to use it!

Build Skills and Knowledge, Not Stuff. Reskilling is the act of learning new skills for everyday life: these are ancestral skills that we recently lost in the last generation or two, skills of taking care of yourself like growing food, preserving food, canning, animal husbandry, foraging, herbalism, how to make fire, how to mend things, and so on.  And now, as people are starting to see that the world is spiraling out of control, I suspect that reskilling is finally going to become very popular!  For a long time, people thought I was quaint or weird when I made my own bread from acorns or tried to grow as much of my own food as I could.  Especially at work in my career, people couldn’t figure me out or why I spent so much time on these skills.

To me, having skills and access to knowledge is a cornerstone of my own collapse strategy–to survive and thrive in this age, and to help others do the same.  Anyone can take away my stuff, but nobody can take away my skills.  And also, stuff is getting more and more expensive.  The more skills that I have, the less stuff that I need, and the more that I will be able to take care of myself and others in collaboration with nature.

I wrote a whole chapter about reskilling in my book Sacred Actions, which presents a roadmap for how to find people to teach you skills and places to go.  In fact, Sacred Actions is a whole book about reskilling with many, many tools and techniques, so I do suggest you check it out if you haven’t already.

So to me, there are two core aspects of this: learning from others and reskilling — which is an ongoing process, and having a good library to draw from.

A Resilience and Reskilling Library

This brings me to the primary goal of today: to present a list of books to start stocking a library–knowledge at your fingertips, knowledge that has been published, vetted, and used by many people over time.  I’m assuming three things: you are building your library mostly from scratch, you are building a library with limited funds, and you have limited land/resources, or other circumstances.  Thus, I’m going to share only a few books in each category and those that will be the most applicable to the most people, and if you want more, please do share in the comments and I can recommend expanding some areas

I like to build a library around three things:

1. Books that are the most direct and easy to use, with easy-to-skim tables of contents, a combination of useful information and visuals, and very practical and hands-on.
2. Books that meet the needs that are most pressing for myself and my family
3. Anything written prior to 2022 unless they are written by reputable authors (be very cautious and avoid AI-generated books, of which there are now many and it can be impossible to tell from descriptions or covers which ones are AI-generated…this includes many in the areas I am sharing below).

I actually prefer a lot of the books written in the 1970’s and early 1980’s and find them to be better than books written in the last 10-20 years.  A lot of the books I recommend below are reprints of older editions. So, as you build your library, do check out used book shops and look for books in that date range–it can be so fun to find the original edition.

Get the books now and put them on your shelf, and later, you’ll be glad you did!  Understand that even if it takes you some time to get into the different categories and learn the skills from these books, having useful knowledge is the first step.  A lot of these books are not in the first pages of an Amazon search either–these are all books I’ve read and have on my shelves.

General and Comprehensive Books for Preparedness

The first group is a set of books that help with general, and all-around preparedness.  Books like these are good to have on the shelf because they fill in gaps of more specialized books and allow you to see the different kinds of projects and skills you can take on.  I recommend having a few books like this available.

• Emergy, Carla (2019). The Encyclopedia of Country Living.  (there is now a 50th anniversary edition, but I have a much older edition and it is great!)
  • This is one of the books that started it all–over 1000 pages of everything you need to do to live simply.  It presents everything in a direct manner and covers a wide range of useful skills primarily around food production: gardening, plants, food preservation, flour milling, animal husbandry, bread baking, and cooking on a woodstove!
• Gehring, Abigail (2007).  Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills. Skyhorse Publishing. 
  • This is a very comprehensive book offers a range of traditional living skills, which is a good idea to have on your shelf.  It has been around a long time and has simple and clear instructions for a wide variety of things you may want to know how to do from food preservation and foraging to hatching chickens.
• O’Driscoll, Dana (2021). Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year.  
  • I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own contribution to this genre: a comprehensive introduction to sustainable living skills (reskilling, gardening, home cooking, home energy, stuff reduction, community building) combined with nature spirituality.

Food

When you start out, a lot of your books should be about food.  Food is central to any preparation strategy and is generally one of the first things people think about.  Here are three categories for food!

Growing Food

There are countless books in this category, and again, having a few of the best ones on your shelf is a great idea.  I could list 30 books here, but if  you were only going to buy a few, here’s what I’d recommend:

• Coleman, Elliot (2018). The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Grower.
  • This is, in many ways, the ‘bible’ of organic growing and food production.  It is fantastic in every way, including planting charts, soil building techniques, and especially, pest management.

    

• Deppe, Carol (2010). The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times.  
  • I love this book and it has taught me a lot not only about mindsets towards resilience generally but also lists specific species of plants to grow that can handle extreme weather, droughts, and so much more.
• Markham, Brett (2010). Mini-Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. 
  • Very useful for people who are in suburban areas where you have only a little bit of space to grow food.  I love the practical approach this book takes.  It has full colors with lots of pictures and includes good information for season extension (which is really important now with the shifts in climate).
• Hemenway, Toby (2009). Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. 
  • For many of us, this was the book that got us started on the path to building food forests and thinking about ecosystems and resiliency.  It is a classic book and a great introduction to how to build perennial food systems into your home.

Preserving and Cooking Food

Now you’ve grown some food–the next step is cooking and preservation.  Food preservation and non-traditional cooking methods are arts in and of themselves, and it is a wonderful skill to learn.  Here are some books to get you started.

• Kingry and Devine (2024) The Ball Book of Home Preserving.  
  • Most people get started with this book on their shelves when it comes to canning: both hot water bath and pressure canning.  The only thing this book doesn’t do is low-sugar canning, which I prefer. Thus, I use this book for vegetables and I use the next book I recommend for fruit
• Duffy, Allison Carroll (2021). Preserving with Pomonas Pectin. 
  • If you want to do extensive home canning of fruits and jams without all the sugar, this is the book for you.  You also need to stock up on some Pomonas Universal Pectin, which can stay shelf stable for a very long time.
• Hobson, Phyllis (1995). Making and Using Dried Foods.
  • This is my go-to book for drying and dehydrating.  When I lived in Michigan, we had regular blackouts that would last 5-10 days, so I would keep very little in my freezer.  Rather, I learned how to dry and can most of my food (or use a root cellar bucket, which I’ve been using for a really long time and they work great!)
• Fallon, Sally. (2001). Nourishing Traditions. 
  • This is a really useful cookbook that also has instructions for a lot of foods like making saurkraut, bone broth, sprouted grains, cultured dairy, and more.  A staple in my kitchen!

Foraging for Food

Foraging books are generally specific to your ecosystem, so finding ones that are ecosystem-based are your best bet.  I live in the mid-Atlantic USA, so based on that bioregion, here are a few of my recommendations: one for wild plants, one for mushrooms, and one for general plant ID.  And yes, these are newer books (post-2022) but they are by reputable authors who I trust :).

• Thayer, Samuel. Sam Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America. (2023).
  • I could recommend any of his books, but if you are only going to get one, this would be the one to buy.  This offers a comprehensive introduction to foraging wild plants, complete with photos and harvest times.
• Batokva, Barbora.  Hunting Mushrooms: How to Safely Identify, Forage, and Cook Wild Fungi (2024).  
  • Barbora is the president of my local mushroom club of which I am a member, the Western PA Mushroom Club. Thus, I know her personally and see her dedication to mushroom safety and identification. This is a great introductory book and a great introduction to fungi!

Learning foraging also means learning a great deal about plant ID. Many people use apps now, but apps have their weaknesses, and I always recommend a good book or two instead. Here are my two favorite plant ID books:

• Newcomb, Lawrence. B Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide: An Ingenious New Key System for Quick, Positive Field Identification of Wildflowers, Flowering Trees and Shrubs (any edition).  
  • This is one I generally carry into the field with me, and it allows for quick identification of any flowering plant.  It is invaluable!
• Elpel, Thomas. Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification (any edition).  
  • A fantastic resource to start to learn botany and plant families.  Study this and you’ll be well ahead on your next foraging adventure.

Seed Saving and Root Cellaring

Our final category offers two books to support your sustainable gardening and preservation practice:

• Ashworth, Suzanne.  Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners (2002).  
  • A go-to book for how to save seeds from most common vegetables.  A lot of them have some tricks (such as fermenting tomato seeds as they dry) and so you want to refer to books like this for each seed variety.
• Bubel, Mike and Bubel, Nancy. Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables (1991). 
  • A great book to introduce you to how to build and use a root cellar.

Herbalism and Medical Care

This is an area near and dear to my heart, and one that I am actively involved in teaching others through the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism.  I often get asked what books to start an herbal library with, and yes, there are always so many choices!  More on learning herbalism: how to get started and my full guide of all of my writings on herbalism.

Making and Using Plant Medicine: Herbalism

You really need two kinds of resources to get started in herbalism: Medicine making books (the first two on my list) and books that teach you about how to use herbs as medicine (called materia medicas). Here are my recommendations in both areas.

• Green, James. The herbal medicine-maker’s handbook: A home manual. Crossing Press (2011).

  

  • A thorough introduction to many different medicine-making techniques; this is one on every herbalist’s shelf and is a wonderful addition to your library.
• Cech, Richo (2016). Making Plant Medicine. 
  • I consider this book a companion to Green’s book, in that it gives detailed instructions for making specific preparations from hundreds of plants.  It contains limited materia medica information as well, but you’d still want another materia medica (MM = how medicinal plants are used for various conditions).
• Grieve, Margaret. A Modern Herbal (1991).  In two volumes.
  • This is a very low cost materia medica that you can also access this free online. I often recommend this one for beginners as it is easy to understand and comprehensive. However, it is an older edition, so there are other options.
  • • The other one I really like for more advanced practitioners or those interested in Traditional Western herbalism is Matthew Wood’s Earthwise Herbal (two volumes).  These are personally what I use in my own herbal practice, but without understanding Traditional Western Herbalism, they are often very difficult to comprehend for beginners and are not the place to start.  To use these, you also need Wood’s The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism (2013) book.
• Buhner, Stephen Harrod.  Herbal Antibiotics. 
  • Because here’s where the rubber meets the road: can you use herbs as antibiotics? In what ways? This is a wonderful and comprehensive introduction and well worth your time and putting on your shelf.
• Hoffman, David. An Herbal Guide to Stress Relief. 
  • While this is certainly a specialty book, I put it on this list because we are all experiencing so much stress right now, and finding ways of helping nature help us is part of the work.  There are lots of books on this, but this one is cheap and easily accessible and full of great info.

Animal Herbalism

If you have animals, you will also want to ensure you can take care of their needs.  Here are the two books I recommend.

• Levy, Juliette.  The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable (1991). 
  • The most comprehensive guide to working with farm animals such as horses, cows, goats, geese, chickens, ducks, pigs, etc. in a holistic way using simple herbs.  A staple for those who have farms.  I would combine this with an animal-specific book, below, as animal-specific books often also discuss diseases and treatment specific to animals (but not necessarily from an herbalism perspective).
• Levy, Juliette. The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat (1991).
  • Another great book by herbalist Juliette Levy that covers comprehensive care for your pet dogs and cats.   The only thing that isn’t really covered in this book is some of the new advances in treating animals with mushroom medicine, including Turkey Tail (Tramates versicolor) for infections and cancer. But the rest is amazing and it is still the best book out there for pet care.

• Werner, David; Thuman, Carol, and Mawell, Jane. Where there is no Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook. 
  • This is one of the most printed and used health care books, used all over the world, and written in simple ways that even someone without a medical background can use.  Also available for free through the Internet Archive.
• Dickson, Murray. Where there is no Dentist.  
  • This is a book that hopefully you won’t need, but it is quite useful if you do.  It also includes information about how to properly care for teeth and gums.
• Burns, A. August, and Lovich, Ronnie. Where Women Have No Doctor: A Health Guide for Women (2020)
  • The third book in this series, for those of you who are women or have women in your life!

Animal Husbandry

There are so many options for animal husbandry books.  If you choose to get any of the general and comprehensive books on my list above, they usually contain a wealth of good knowledge about animal husbandry.  I do suggest that you pick up specialized books (again look for those from the 1970’s and 80’s) on the animals of your choice.  Having books about animal husbandry (raising, feed, foraging, etc), animal medicine, and also slaughter and preparation can be very useful.  A few books of the many that are useful in areas I am aware of:

Bushcraft and Wilderness Skills

Being more sustainable also means being more handy in the woods and in wild and natural areas.  There are so many good books here, but two that are really outstanding to start with are

• Jaeger, Ellsworth. Wildwood Wisdom. 
  • This book was originally published in 1945 and has gone through many editions, any edition is fine.  The book is a comprehensive introduction to wilderness living skills. It has a tremendous amount of information on bushcraft and tons of useful illustrations.  This book covers everything: tracking, shelter building, axe and knife work, tracking, using bark, appropriate clothing, and more.

    
• Gatty, Harold. Finding Your Way Without a Map or Compass. 
  • This book was originally published in the 1950’s and has also gone through many editions. I learned more about wilderness navigation from this book than any other.  I highly recommend it!
• Wiseman, John. SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: A Comprehensive Course in Emergency and Wilderness Medicine.  
  • A very comprehensive book to wilderness survival and wilderness medicine.
    

Surviving Collapse

This last category are for books that assume the worst and prepare you to shift to more radical kinds of living (without a grid, in the event of a big collapse). Again, it is good to have a few of these on your shelf. Here are two of my favorites:

• Miller, Joseph (2012). Beyond Collapse: Surviving and Rebuilding Civilisation from Scratch. 
  • A very useful comprehensive book and one that contains a great deal of information both practical and also food for thought.  You can purchase a copy or you can also download it free from the Internet Archive here.
    

Keeping the Vision and Bringing in the Joy

My final category are two books that I recommend all of us have on their shelf to help us navigate this age.

• Macy, Joanna and Brown, Molly Young. Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (2014). 
  • This is a beautifully written and thought-out book about how to engage in a “great turning” to earth. It offers many individual and group ways of processing the grief of this age and returning to the living earth.  Recommended read for everyone.
    
• Bay Laurel, Alicia.Living on the Earth: Celebrations, Storm Warnings, Formulas, Recipes, Rumors, and Country Dances (1971). 
  • This book may not be everyone’s flavor, but I find the joyful way in which sustainable living material is presented is refreshing and fun. One of my personal favorite books of all time and an inspiration into a connected, reverent, and enchanted life.

Conclusion

There you have it–a core library of basic books that can be very useful moving forward.  I have a lot of other books I could have recommended, but I didn’t want to get this list out of hand.  What books would you add to this list? What categories am I missing?