Recommendations from the founder of The Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market public policy research and education organization; widely published commentator on Vermont issues; co-author of The Vermont Papers and editor of the Institute’s monthly Ethan Allen Letter.
Herbert Agar
Land of the Free (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935)
Ralph Borsodi
Flight From the City (New York: Harper, 1933)
Wendell Berry
The Unsettling Of America (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977)
Baker Brownell
The Human Community (New York: Harper’s, 1950)
Frank Bryan and John McClaughry
The Vermont Papers; Recreating Democracy On A Human Scale (Post Mills VT: Chelsea Green, 1989)
G.K. Chesterton
The Outline Of Sanity (New York: Dodd Mead, 1927)
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1835) (many editions)
Richard Douthwaite
Short Circuit (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1996)
Paul Goodman
People Or Personnel: Decentralizing The Mixed System (New York: Random House, 1965)
Andrew Greeley
No Bigger Than Necessary (New York: New American Library, 1977)
Jane Jacobs
Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1984)
Daniel Kemmis
Community and the Politics of Place (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press, 1990)
Leopold Kohr
The Breakdown of Nations (1957) (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978)
Petr Kropotkin
Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899) (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1974)
Arthur Morgan
The Future of Community and the Community of the Future (Yellow Springs OH: Community Service, 1957)
Robert Nisbet
The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford, 1953)
James Robertson
The Sane Alternative (London: James Robertson, 1978)
Wilhelm Ropke
A Humane Economy (1957) (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960)
Kirkpatrick Sale
Human Scale (New York: Coward, McCann & Geohegan, 1980)
E. F. Schumacher
Small Is Beautiful (1973) (Hartley & Marks, Port Roberts WA, 1999)
Michael Shuman
Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in the Global Age (London: Routledge, 2000)
Going Local, written by attorney and economist Michael Shuman, synthesizes the arguments why communities should resist the temptations of globalization and instead strengthen their economies through locally owned companies, import substitution, new community financial institutions, and smart local policymaking. He ultimately makes the case, from a progressive political viewpoint, for devolving political and economic power. The book contains an extensive appendix, entitled “Around the World Economy in 80 Ways,” which maps of how hundreds of organizations and interest groups in the United States fit into this new movement for decentralization.