The Natural House Catalog: Everything You Need to Create an Environmentally Friendly Home

A Beautiful Product Guide

The Natural House Catalog: Everything You Need to Create an Environmentally Friendly Home, by David Pearson. Simon & Schuster, 1996. Paperback, 286 pages, $23.

The Natural House Book uses a similar format—beautiful, high-quality photos and clear, concise text—to provide specific product listings for healthy and ecological homes.

The book’s introduction speaks of the need for a balance in creating a natural home between a healthy lifestyle, an ecological consciousness, and spiritual harmony, and the text for each chapter does a great job of explaining the implications of various product choices for each of these realms.

The Catalog is divided into two main sections: the main text, which includes explanations, photos and descriptions of products, case studies of exemplary buildings and business, and brief resource listings; and the directory, which lists contact information for companies mentioned in the first part as well as many that are not mentioned. The directory also carries advertisements for many of the companies listed (including

EBN).

The main text is divided into eleven chapters and many subsections, and the directory follows the same structure. While the sections are for the most part intuitive, not every product fits neatly into a category, so some can be hard to find. Having the directory divided into so many separate lists can also make some contact information hard to locate. The listings are quite extensive, however, so once you become familiar with the format it’s a great resource.

Green building practitioners may wish they could get the directory section without paying for all the pretty pictures. But the enticing presentation is great for convincing people that there are viable alternatives to the conventional tract house and its pink-carpet-or-blue-carpet choices.