The Whole Earth Catalog
Stewart Brand launched the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968 as a guide to what he called access to tools, a sweeping inventory of books, hand tools, building plans, and ideas that ordinary people could use to shape their own lives. The pages mixed reviews of tipi designs, geodesic domes, and chainsaws with writing on cybernetics, Buddhism, and small-scale farming. Brand and his editors saw the project as a way to put serious knowledge in the hands of readers far from universities and big institutions. The catalog won a National Book Award in 1972 and ran through several editions, ending with a final issue whose back cover carried the line Stay hungry, stay foolish. It became one of the defining documents of the late sixties counterculture and an early template for the open, hacker-friendly internet that would follow.
What you might want to know about The Whole Earth Catalog
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A counterculture compendium of tools, books, and ideas for self-reliant living, assembled by Stewart Brand and his collaborators.
In his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Jobs called the catalog one of the bibles of his generation and closed his speech by quoting its farewell line, Stay hungry, stay foolish.
The original print runs are out of print and collected as artifacts, but archived editions are available to read free online through the Whole Earth Catalog archive.
The Whole Earth Catalog was written by Stewart Brand, published in 1968 by Portola Institute.
The Whole Earth Catalog is 448 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Whole Earth Catalog takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
The Whole Earth Catalog is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
