A new book from nationally recognized author Thomas A. Lewis offers a fresh and startling perspective on the problems afflicting modern industrial society, and on the increasingly urgent need for sustainable living. In Brace for Impact: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age by Sustainable Living, Lewis argues that industry’s relentless, decades-long search for economies of scale has caused equally enormous concentrations of risks, which now threaten the continued existence of every industrial-scale enterprise supplying essential human needs.

Brace for Impact catalogs the mounting failures of industrial agriculture, from the destruction wrought by the way agribusiness grows crops, to the horrors — and dangers — of the way it raises animals. With chapters on water (dwindling supplies and worsening pollution), imminent oil shortages (peak oil, in fact, may already have arrived) and rampant problems in the electrical grid (for which the solution is not a “smart” grid, but no grid at all), the book offers an exhaustive review of the rising threats to our supplies of food, water and energy. Then, after examining the political and financial institutions that refuse to recognize the dangers, let alone move to counter them, Brace for Impact faces the inevitable conclusion: industrial society is about to crash, and cannot be saved.

But Lewis argues that while it is not possible to save everyone from the crash, it is entirely possible, indeed relatively simple, for any individual, family or community that embraces sustainable living to avoid the worst consequences. In a final chapter, “Sanctuary,” Lewis points the way toward security and prosperity in the ruins of an age destroyed by greed.