Contributors -- who include Kirkpatrick Sale, Jane Jacobs, David Ehrenfeld, Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, David Brower, Stephanie Mills, and Hazel Henderson -- explore topics that range from agricultural reform to bioregional economics. They all, however, focus on the importance of sustainability, community, healthy and locally based economies of scale, education, the dignity of good work, and balance between human needs and the well-being of the natural world.

The book is based on a lecture series sponsored by the E. F. Schumacher Society, a series honoring the ideas that Schumacher first put forward in his classic book Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. An economist, Schumacher was one of the first popular writers to make the connection between economics and environmental issues.