Book Review:

Serious Straw Bale: A Construction Guide for All Climates, by Paul Lacinski and Michel Bergeron.

Serious Straw Bale: A Construction Guide for All Climates by Paul Lacinski and Michel Bergeron
Reviewed by Ex-Editor Mark Piepkorn

This is a superior resource, covering so much ground that no other straw-bale book does. It offers a startling amount of information that complements and updates such classics as The Straw Bale House and Build It With Bales. With clarity and wit it thoroughly addresses dozens of frequently misunderstood and overlooked concepts, details and concerns from a perspective steeped in equal parts building science and field experience. This book is an excellent, vital addition to the thinking person's literature of strawbale.

And I mean every single word of it.

This isn't the only title on strawbale that a person needs, however. It seems evident that the authors made a particular effort not to replace, but to update and expand existing books. For instance, the very rudimentary but pretty much indispensable knowledge of how to make a half-bale isn't included here... and I applaud the authors for that apparently purposeful omission. The only way any book could replace a title like Build It With Bales is to actually reprint it between different covers. But in the same way, Build It With Bales is no substitute for this book.

This is a deeply considered, multifaceted presentation which needs to be considered in aggregate, just like the components of a house need to be understood not only individually, but in their relationships to each other.

Like every other book on the subject, many ideas are presented and points made; and the astute reader will note a couple instances of self-contradiction within the text... that several details are greatly enhanced or clarified by information elsewhere in the book... and that a couple points are already out of date or under suspicion, either superseded or given new light by recent material in The Last Straw. (Your subscription to TLS is still the best way to keep abreast of breaking news and developments.)

Serious Straw Bale is a serious breakthrough, not a tired rehash of all the same old stuff. Even the most avid and anal strawbale aficionado is likely to find new and interesting information, perspectives and thought-provoking analyses.