The Last CoEvolution Quarterly: Eight Issues Recording the Journal’s Transition into Whole Earth Review, 1983 to 1984

CoEvolution Quarterly

Periodical

Eight issues of CoEvolution Quarterly from 1974 to 1984, documenting the Whole Earth movement’s expansion from environmental self sufficiency and appropriate technology into personal computing, nuclear strategy, global politics, religion, systems theory, and experimental social organization. The group begins with an issue still identified as a “Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog,” proceeds through discussions of voluntary simplicity, alternative energy, nonviolent politics, and decentralized enterprise, and concludes with the journal’s engagement with Gaia theory, nuclear winter, reform era China, and computer culture. Contributions by James Lovelock, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Orville Schell, and Robert Crumb, No. 14, Summer 1977. The contents page visible in your copy lists “R. Crumb’s Modern Dance Workshop” and “Down Home Crumb by R. Crumb.” The front and rear wrappers are also signed in the artwork “R. Crumb ’77," Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Sallie Tisdale, Christopher Alexander, Elisabeth Kübler Ross, J. G. Ballard, Simon Ortiz, and Stewart Brand place scientific and political analysis beside poetry, comics, practical instruction, and criticism of institutional authority. The final issue announces the journal’s replacement by Whole Earth Review with the cover line, “Next issue is Whole Earth Review: livelier snake, new skin,” preserving the editorial transition through which the Whole Earth network adapted its countercultural program to the technological and political debates of the mid 1980s.

CoEvolution Quarterly. Sausalito, California: POINT and the Whole Earth Catalog, 1974 to 1984.
[1] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 2, Summer 1974.
[2] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 14, Summer 1977.
[3] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 34, Summer 1982.
[4] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 38, Summer 1983.
[5] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 39, Fall 1983.
6] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 41, Spring 1984.
[7] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 42, Summer 1984.
[8] CoEvolution Quarterly, No. 43, Fall 1984. Identified on the cover as “The Last” issue, it includes Gary Snyder’s “Grace,” Paul Krapfel’s “Becoming Part of Gaia,” Sallie Tisdale’s “Life As a Stream of Consciousness: Alzheimer’s Disease,” Wes Jackson on agricultural inheritance, and Maryat Lee’s “Indigenous Theater: Plays Without Actors.” Further material addresses dark skies, Indigenous performance, bioregionalism, information design, strong materials, housing, groundwater, agriculture, and community health.

Founded in 1974 by the staff of the Whole Earth Catalog, CoEvolution Quarterly retained the Catalog’s commitment to accessible tools, decentralized knowledge, and systems thinking while replacing its product centered format with sustained essays, reportage, interviews, reviews, poetry, and practical instruction. Its departmental structure linked politics with “Understanding Whole Systems,” land use, soft technology, craft, community, communications, learning, nomadics, and business, allowing contributors to approach ecological and social problems through scientific theory, household practice, institutional criticism, and experiments in local organization. The decade represented here moves from the food crisis arguments, voluntary simplicity, solar construction, and back to the land practices of the 1970s to the nuclear politics, global systems analysis, personal computers, and information design of the early 1980s. The journal ran from 1974 through 1984, with No. 43 preceding its continuation as Whole Earth Review. Some edge wear and occasional creasing to wrappers; No. 14 with water damage, page discoloration, and general wear, its spine intact and legible; No. 43 with heavier surface wear and small losses at the extremities; interiors generally toned but complete and legible. Overall good condition. A decade long record of the Whole Earth network’s movement from countercultural tool access and ecological self sufficiency toward global political analysis, systems theory, and the emerging culture of personal computing.

Item #23671

Price: $420.00