With the global economy swirling down the drain and the ice caps in the early stages of mud season, it's starting to dawn on many of us that it's time to look for a more sustainable way to live.

If the presidential election is any indication, most Americans are tired of trusting the federal government to do the right thing. Perhaps there also is a realization that we have to tend to our own houses and those of our neighbors in order to maintain our way of life.

Predictions suggest today's lower gasoline and energy prices are only the lull before the storm. The last round of $4.50 fuel prices could be just a wake-up call for what's to come, and, after a couple of months of tumbling retirement accounts and rising credit standards, a change in our personal directions might be prudent.

Maybe that shift could be finding a job that better suits your talents, living mortgage free, raising dependable and safe food or even generating your own heat and energy.

Just thinking about sustainable living can be head spinning, but if you're considering doing something about the way you live, there are a bunch of new books from White River Junction's Chelsea Green Publishing that are worth checking out.

For those serious about making changes and gaining control of day-to-day living, Chelsea Green can keep you reading for a while. Here are a few of its new and interesting books:

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Mortgage Free! Innovative Strategies for Debt-Free Home Ownership (Second Edition)

By Rob Roy

$24.95; 348 pages

This is a book of dreams. For the average person, having no mortgage seems almost impossible without winning the lottery. Rob Roy offers some suggestions:

If you have a mortgage and want to be free of it, Roy has some painless tips, such as making two half-payments on your mortgage each month instead of one full payment (that saves nine years), paying an extra $50 against the principal (that saves $800 in the end) or using a mortgage software system that can cut the years of a mortgage by one-third to one-half.

But the real purpose of the book is to explain how to avoid a mortgage in the first place. For that you have to start from the beginning, buying the land and building the house. The book is a how-to guide for being mortgage-free, which also includes developing a sustainable habitat that makes other fixed costs such as heating affordable.

Roy is the director of Earthwood Building School and the author of five other books. He lives mortgage free in West Chazy, N.Y.

Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur's Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work

By Dave Pollard

$17.95; 208 pages

Dave Pollard's new book Finding the Sweet Spot is a guide for people who are seeking a first job, are aging and looking for a “second career,” and those who feel underemployed.

He follows three people who fit the categories throughout the book to illustrate that there is a “better way” than working in a job that is not satisfying. It is a path to overcoming the fears and anxieties of being a “natural entrepreneur” in an occupation that answers the question “What am I meant to do?”

Pollard, who worked for 27 years as an adviser to entrepreneurs, takes a pragmatic and logical approach to finding the dream job.

When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency

By Matthew Stein

$35; 493 pages

Chelsea Green Publishing

This revised and expanded edition of the 2000 “be prepared” manual seems more relevant today than it did when it was first printed.

Since 2000, this country has seen the 9/11 attacks, regional power blackouts, devastating hurricanes, lingering droughts and increased flooding, just to mention a few things that have caught us by surprise. We've learned that without electricity, we have no gasoline, no water, no refrigeration and no ability to purchase food or reach the cash in our bank accounts. We've also seen staggering oil prices and a crumbling economy.

“If you are caught in a natural or human-made disaster, this guide will provide you with basic survival information to help you cope with whatever may come your way,” Stein says in the introduction.

The book is more than a survivalist manual, although the survivalists might profit from reading it. It is a heavy-duty guide for what you need when the lights go out, how to find the resources and how to survive.

If you want to know how to find water, do intensive gardening, make a bow and arrow, build a rammed-earth house, give CPR, brew medicinal teas, generate power, throw pots or build a sanitation system, it's in the book. This book is today's Whole Earth Catalog.

Stein is a MIT-educated engineer and building contractor who has built hurricane-resistant, energy efficient and environmentally friendly homes. He has designed commercial water-filtration systems, photovoltaic roofing panels, medical bacteriological filters and automated assembly machinery. He lives near Lake Tahoe, Calif.

The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit

By Stephen and Rebekah Hren

$35; 260 pages

This book is designed for those motivated to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of nonrenewable fossil fuels in their existing homes.

In addition to chapters detailing simple to complex projects that save or eliminate energy use, the book also provides a basic understanding of energy consumption. It's a guide that can be used to trim fuel bills or to help move you completely off the grid.

The projects, which range in scope from growing mushrooms to building a closed-loop solar hot-water heater, are outlined at the beginning with the time it takes to build, the skill level needed, materials, costs and energy savings.

There is a long section of the book on food and landscaping as well as chapters on cooking, refrigeration, appliances and lighting, heating and hot water and waste disposal among others. The authors make it clear that inexpensive projects that take little time can have large return in savings.

Stephen and Rebekah Hren live in Durham, N.C., where she is a solar designer and photovoltaic and hot water system installer. He is a carpenter specializing on restoring antebellum houses.

Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods

By Gary Paul Nabham

$35; 304 pages

Starting in the early 1970s, exotic foods from around the globe began showing up in the United States, and many American cooks rejoiced. In the decades since, many old American foods and preparations have been forgotten. This book has come out of the collaborative called Renewing America's Food Traditions that was founded in 2004 by chef and food organizations to play a positive role in the conservation, restoration and celebration of food traditions unique to the North American continent.

The book reflects the organization's efforts. It identifies and brings recognition to the American foods most at risk of extinction and cultural loss, the introduction says.

After starting the project, the collaborative founders realized that North America is broken into culinary regions that cross not only state lines but also national borders. These “ecogastronomic” regions are called “food nations.” Many of these food nations existed -- Salmon Nation (Alaska and the Northwest) and Cornbread Nation (the South) are two -- before the project began. The playful names are a good way to think about regions in terms of the relationships of food, place and culture, according to the book's editor, Gary Paul Nabham. For example, along the East Coast from Delaware to New Brunswick is the Clambake Nation, and the Upper Valley is in the Maple Syrup Nation.

The foods on the endangered list for Maple Syrup Nation are the Java Chicken, the Cayuga Duck, the Oldmixon Free (Clearstone) Peach, Seneca Hominy Flint Corn and the Buckeye Chicken. The book gives a history of the food, a list of further readings and ironically, a recipe.

Fresh Food From Small Spaces

By R.J. Ruppenthal

$24.95; 178 pages

This is the book for people who live in apartments, townhouses or other city or town dwellings without a lot of space in the yard, but it also has a lot of useful information for people who do have a little land.

In Fresh Food From Small Spaces author R.J. Ruppenthal shows how to produce a significant portion of your food in an insignificant amount of room.

The book is a step-by-step guide to selecting plants, preparing the garden as well as growing such alternative crops as mushrooms and sprouts in dark spaces. There also is good information about planting with cold frame beds and solar bells, which are useful during the colder months.

The information in the book about raising honeybees and chickens as well as composting and making fermented foods also are useful no matter where you live.

Ruppenthal is an attorney and professor at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, Calif. His expertise in urban and indoor gardening has come from years of trial-and-error experience. He and his family have been able to raise homegrown food 365 days a year in their small city home.

Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen's Guide to Community Supported Agriculture

By Elizabeth Henderson with Robyn Van En

$35; 303 pages

Robyn Van En was the founder of the first CSA in the United States. Although she started the book, Van En died before the first edition of Sharing the Harvest was published in 2000. Elizabeth Henderson, who had signed on to help Van En with the book, ended up finishing the project after Van En's death.

For this revised and expanded edition, Henderson revisited the hundreds of people she had talked with eight years earlier. The result is a comprehensive guide that explains the many approaches to CSAs and lays out how they work and how to start one. The books makes a convincing case for saving farms and farmland.

If you're thinking about setting up a CSA or just interested in how they work, this well-written book is a good choice.

In addition to founding Indian Line Farm, the first CSA, Van En was the author of the “path-breaking” handbook Basic Formula to Create Community Supported Agriculture. She died in 1997 from asthma.

Henderson has been making a living as an organic farmer for more than 25 years and for 19 years has been with CSA. She was part of the National Organic Farmers Association team that produced the book The Real Dirt.

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community

By H.C. Flores

$25; 334 pages

In Food Not Lawns, Heather C. Flores shows how easy it can be for anyone who cares about the Earth to grow gardens and build communities.

The first half of the book deals with gardening and focuses on how to establish ecological paradise gardens using available resources. The book also explains such elements of a garden as water, soil, plants and seeds, as well as how to design an ecologically friendly, low maintenance garden. The second half of the book takes the garden experience to the community level.

Flores has a bachelor's degree in ecology, education and the arts from Vermont's Goddard College. She's a certified permaculture designer and environmental educator. She lives in Eugene, Ore.

Chelsea Green Guides are a series of pocket-sized conservation guides:

Biking to Work

By Rory McMullan

$7.95; 85 pages

This is a detailed guide that includes information about why to bike, how to get started, buying a bike, choosing a route, showers and bicycle repair. Any beginning cyclist would appreciate this.

Composting: An easy Household Guide

By Nicky Scott

$7.95; 95 pages

The book is a quick reference for the reasons for composting, how to use compost and how to build a compost system. Just in case you missed something, the book finishes with an A-to-Z guide to composting that includes useful warnings about taking care not to compost such things as glass, soft drink cans, plastics or giant hogweed.

Nicky Scott also has another book in the series: Reduce, Reuse Recycle: An Easy Household Guide, which also sells for $7.95.

Energy: Use Less -- Save More

By Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert

$7.95; 77 pages

This is a quick-hit list of facts and figures about using energy. For example: “Lowering the temperature of your thermostat by a mere 2 degrees could reduce your energy bill by 10 percent,” or, “We spend 10 percent of our electricity bills on lighting. Have candlelight suppers.”

The series also includes: Water: Use Less -- Save More and Greening your Office: From Cupboard to Corporation: An A-Z Guide by the same authors, Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert. Each one is $7.95.