Helpful Score: 2
No. Not a good book. Larry Haun may be a great carpenter, but as a writerat least in this bookhe's less than engaging. There are some interesting parts when he writes about construction techniques and Habitat for Humanity, but they're few and far between. While I generally agree with him about today's society having too many excesses and people having too much stuff, I don't need to be almost constantly harangued about it. Maybe it was great growing up in the good old days in the Nebraska plains where you could be happy playing with an old orange crate and a broken hammer and did not need things like iPods and modern conveniences, but stop the incessant whining about what's wrong with the world today. He seems to forget that the good old days also had polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, and other serious diseases. And the editor should keep his day job because he certainly did not contribute anything to this book (unless it was really, really bad originally).
So so. Simply written by a guy that was at the forfront of developing modern carpentry from building in LA the houseing boom in the 50's. Doesn't talk much about that. Its a collection of chapters about the different kinds of houses he has lived in and with a running commentary about being green and easy on the planet, from a guy that built hundreds of houses...
