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“This compelling book has a refreshing style, at once very personal and very passionate.”—Library Journal

“Jensen and McBay's message that we need to grow up and ‘put away the childish notion that we have the right to take whatever we want from nonhumans’ is eminently reasonable.”—Publishers Weekly

“Derrick Jensen is a rare and original voice of sanity in a chaotic world. He has wisdom and wit, grace and style, and is a wonderful guide to a good life beautifully lived.”—Howard Zinn

“This is a fierce book…Its basic premise—that we’re in worse trouble than we understand, and that a little change around the edges won’t help—is precisely the message that needs to get out.”—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future and The End of Nature

“What We Leave Behind is the kind of direct, unflinching, personal writing that you’d expect from a memoir about a harrowing childhood, not one about the state of the planet, or what happens to waste...This is a book about choosing sides—our destructive, compartmentalized culture of the future of planet Earth.”—E Magazine

“The text moves frequently from personal narrative to hard, scientific fact to disturbing news accounts about the ongoing, wanton destruction of our planet by corporate interests...What We Leave Behind is not light reading. But a reader willing to stay on this circuitous journey to the end will be rewarded.”—Foreword Magazine

What We Leave Behind is a piercing, impassioned guide to living a truly responsible life on earth. Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. Here, award-winning writer Derrick Jensen and activist Aric McBay weave historical analysis and devastatingly beautiful prose to remind us that life—human and nonhuman—will not go on unless we do everything we can to facilitate the most basic process on earth, the root of sustainability: one being’s waste must always become another being’s food.

Activist, philosopher, teacher, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, Derrick Jensen holds degrees in creative writing and mineral engineering physics. His books include Endgame, volumes 1 and 2; As the World Burns, with Stephanie McMillan; A Language Older Than Words; and The Culture of Make Believe.

Aric McBay is a writer, activist, and small-scale organic farmer who works to share information about community sufficiency and off-the-grid skills. He is the author of Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash and creator of “In the Wake: A Collective Manual-in-progress for Outliving Civilization” (www.inthewake.org).

About the Author

Activist, philosopher, teacher, and leading voice of uncompromising dissent, Derrick Jensen holds degrees in creative writing and mineral engineering physics. His books include Endgame, Volumes 1 and 2; As the World Burns, with Stephanie McMillan; A Language Older Than Words; and The Culture of Make Believe. Aric McBay is a writer, activist, and small-scale organic farmer who works to share information about community sufficiency and off-the-grid skills. He is the author of Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life after Gridcrash and creator of "In the Wake: A Collective Manual-in-progress for Outliving Civilization" (www.inthewake.org).

Praise for What We Leave Behind…

"Unwaveringly forthright, urgent and compelling. While there has been no shortage of recent works written about climate change, environmental degradation, dwindling fossil fuel supplies, and impending catastrophe, few are as direct, pragmatic, and compassionate as this one."—Powell's Books

"Jensen seeks to break the habits of mind that induce us to deny the severity of our environmental predicament and point the way to significant change. To that end, Jensen and McBay conduct an in-depth analysis of waste and wastefulness...their demand for the end of wishful thinking and beginning of environmental transformation is rooted in meticulously constructed arguments, striking psychological insights, and profound love of life."—Booklist

"Reading What We Leave Behind makes me think of Thoreau, of Lewis Mumford, of Tolstoy, who asked us to rethink our most deeply embedded beliefs in order to live clean, modest, thoughtful lives, to return to that natural world we have forsaken. Jensen and McBay are those rare thinkers who challenge all the accepted norms and habits of 'civilization' and ask us to get back to our naked selves." —Howard Zinn

“This is a fierce book. . . . Its basic premise—that we’re in worse trouble than we understand, and that a little change around the edges won't help—is precisely the message that needs to get out.”—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future and The End of Nature

“A tour de force of beautifully written storytelling about what is required to stop killing the planet. . . . A rare book that provides answers.”—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman and Red Dirt

"...as engrossing as it is important. The facts Jensen and McBay present should horrify you. . . if facts like these don’t spur readers into action, then nothing will."—Feministe

"In this sometimes unsettling portrayal of how industrial society destroyed the natural systems of growth and decay, Jensen and McBay hold that the only way life can continue will not be through technological salvation, but by returning to the foundations of sustainability."—Sierra Club

"At its base, what this book is about is remembering how to think realistically—that is, to think like life itself, to think with boundaries as permeable as deep, soft, rich soil. To begin to think again like life itself will be one step toward protecting that life, on this beautiful and extraordinary planet, our one and only home." —from What We Leave Behind