Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand
Summarizing the life of someone as singular as Stewart Brand is a challenge, said Paul Sabin in The New York Times. But the new biography by Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter John Markoff makes an earnest effort to chronicle Brand’s path from ’60s countercultural icon to forward-thinking business consultant. Brand first rose to cultural prominence in 1966 when, inspired by an LSD trip, he successfully campaigned for NASA to release the first picture of Earth from space. Soon after, he published his signature project, The Whole Earth Catalog, which offered advice, instructions, and product reviews for commune dwellers. “Did the Catalog make sense? No, but that was its genius—it didn’t have to reconcile enthusiasm for technological innovation with reverence for back-to-the-land living.” It sold more than a million copies, and a 1971 edition won a National Book Award.
(Penguin, $32)
After the Catalog was published, Brand seemed omnipresent, but Markoff “nixes the idea that his book’s protagonist is a Zelig-like character, who simply showed up anywhere and everywhere as hip new things were developing,” said W. Patrick McCray in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Still, it’s impossible to deny that Brand “was, and remains, actively and undeniably present” for a remarkable number of cultural pivot points, from the first Grateful Dead shows to 21st-century TED talks. He’s also been at the center of a series of less-remembered ventures, including a 1970s pitch for space settlements and a
Whole Earth Software Catalog, published in 1984, that was “financially disastrous.” Despite the misses, Brand has continued to pursue his broader dream of planetary consciousness via science, technology, and environmentalism.
“It is a challenge to capture the essence of a protean life while the subject is still writing the script,” said Michael Shermer in The Wall Street Journal. Markoff, though, has done so beautifully. Now 83, Brand is “more like Elon Musk than Timothy Leary”—a “solutions guy, not a New Age guru.” Recent projects include Revive & Restore, a biotech nonprofit that aims to revive extinct species like the passenger pigeon and woolly mammoth, and the book Whole Earth Discipline, which proposes integrating nuclear power, geoengineering, species protection, and more to create a sustainable future. Tireless inventiveness may be the true unifying principle of Brand’s life, as Markoff neatly summarizes: “Perhaps it is so difficult to put him in a box because he has such an uncanny knack for seeing the world from outside the box.”