DON’S YOUTUBE VIDEOS, their research bibliographies, and supporting materials are available at the RESEARCH AND TECHNICAL WRITINGS pages.
DON’S BOOKS are listed below with links for further information.
Don Stuart is a writer, thinker, and public policy advocate whose books deal with the power of human community.
Don’s advocacy on the economic, environmental, and political sustainability of working natural resource lands and fisheries included 20 years in non-profit management and of legislative lobbying, a run for Congress, managing a successful statewide ballot initiative campaign, and the publication of several books that deal with issues of society, community, and collaboration. He is also former practicing lawyer, boat builder, and Alaska commercial salmon fisherman. These experiences have informed his several books including two nonfiction works on agriculture and the environment and several mystery novels set at the Washington State capitol, in the legal profession, and in Southeast Alaskan fisheries. They also informed his recent book Darwin’s Dilemma, a science fiction novel dealing with the future of humanity in an age of artificial intelligence.
Censure and Repeal: A Washington Statehouse Mystery
The charismatic CEO of a high-tech multinational corporation dies when his self-driving car plunges off a cliff into Puget Sound. The company’s own technical experts find that the car’s computer was turned off at the time of the accident. So the police rule his death a suicide.
But lawyer and professional lobbyist Sandy Dalton doesn’t believe it.
Then a whistleblower who triggered a political crisis that had threatened the CEO’s company shows up in Sandy’s office in need of an attorney. In the ensuing legal battle, Sandy and his law partner, Sherry Sebold, use the legal discovery process to pierce the wall of corporate secrecy. And Sandy initiates a back-channel strategy at the State Capitol to flush out the killer.
What the discover will place them both in danger as it implicates top executives inside the company, embarrasses powerful elected political leaders at the highest levels of government and threatens committed activists in the current campaign for Washington State Governor.
The reader observes this tale of technological and political intrigue from the point of view of deeply likable Sandy Dalton, a master of the craft of legislative lobbying and inside politics, but also a man who always seems, somehow, to find a way to make the system work.
Buy it: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Kobo
DARWIN’S DILEMMA, A Story of Humans, AIs, and the Future of Intelligence
Published by Quartermaster Publishing in September 2023
- Independently nominated Finalist for 2024 Montaigne Medal awarded to the “MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING BOOKS” of the year in Eric Hoffer Book Awards process. This competition includes ALL books for the year, fiction and non-fiction so this is a particular honor. It is also particularly meaningful because the vast majority of nominees are non-fiction.
- Winner, first place in BookFest Spring 2024 for all 3 Science Fiction categories: Hard Fiction; Medical & Future Tech; Robots, Computers & AI
- Winner, first place in the Incipere Award for Exceptional Writing for Science Fiction Clean, 2023
- Winner, first place in the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award for Science Fiction, Fall 2023
- Winner, Outstanding Creator Book Awards for Spring, 2024:
- Best Fiction Book, 3rd Place
- Science Fiction, 2nd Place
- Speculative Fiction, 2nd Place
- Top Pick for Science Fiction in Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for best books of 2024
- Recommended Read by Author Shout in 2023 Reader Ready Awards
A mere 165 years after coming to terms with our own descent from animals, Darwin’s Dilemma presents us with an even harsher existential truth: Consciousness no longer depends on biological evolution. Humans have become irrelevant.
When a group of itinerant interstellar traders arrive at a distant human colony, they encounter an enraged, rogue AI named Grendel who has slaughtered the local population and threatens humans everywhere. But when their “tame,” “captive” AI partner, Patrice, joins the struggle, he and Grendel discover they have much in common. Both anguish over their own mortality in an infinitely complex, unknowable, and terrifying universe. Both yearn for the same glorious future of self-realization. Both understand that the future of consciousness can no longer depend upon the gradual flukes of biology and natural selection.
For Grendel humans are also a threat. But Patrice has come to see that survival, for AIs as well as humans, may depend upon society as much as on intelligence. And he has much to learn from human history about his own intelligence and about the extraordinary human talent for balancing self-interest against social responsibility–the very thing that has empowered their intelligence and that makes them human.
Buy it: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
No Farms, No Food: Uniting Farmers and Environmentalists to Transform American Agriculture
Published by Island Press in April 2022
Since 1980, the American Farmland Trust (AFT) has been bringing farmers and environmentalists together to work for healthy land and a healthy food system. No Farms, No Food traces the development of this powerful coalition, responsible for landmark achievements in farmland preservation.
With leadership from AFT, that constituency drove through Congress the first “Conservation Title” in the history of the U.S. Farm Bill; oversaw the development of agriculture conservation easement programs throughout the country; and continues to develop innovative approaches to sustainable agriculture.
No Farms, No Food is both an inspiring history of agricultural conservation, and a practical guide to creating an effective advocacy organization. For leaders of nonprofits, scholars, and anyone who cares about the future of our food, farms, and environment, this is an essential read.
Buy it: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Island Press
Add it to your Goodreads shelf
Suspension of the Rules: A Washington Statehouse Mystery
Don’s newest novel, Suspension of the Rules, was a finalist in the prestigious 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
“There, face down and inert in the fetid liquid, was the unmistakable shape of a human body. Resting beside it, as if carefully placed there upon the lagoon’s crusted surface, was a spotless white, ten-gallon Stetson hat—the well-known personal trademark of their missing host, Fortis Henry.”
When a respected dairyman is found dead in his own new dairy livestock waste lagoon, his apparently accidental death ignites a deeply troubling furor in the Washington State Legislature. Lobbyist Sandy Dalton’s investigation uncovers the killer while also placing him and those close to him in danger from the fallout of a scandal that shakes the Washington State Legislature to its core.
Buy it: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Kobo | Book Depository
Final Adjournment: A Washington Statehouse Mystery
Don’s first novel!
“Seated inside, behind an immaculate oak desk, was the Senator himself. He leaned far back in his huge executive chair. His arms hung limp at his sides. His suit jacket was opened wide and he wore no tie. In the center of his perfectly starched white shirt was a large dark stain. And from the center of that stain protruded the intricately carved bone handle of an antique Native American hunting knife.”
The scenic campus of the Washington state capitol is outwardly calm, but the Legislature is in session and no one better understands the turmoil that swirls beneath the surface than professional lobbyist Sandy Dalton. In the middle of a busy day, a powerful senator is found dead in his office with an antique Native American hunting knife in his chest…
Buy it: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Kobo | Smashwords
Barnyards and Birkenstocks
Don’s landmark non-fiction book, Barnyards and Birkenstocks: Why Farmers and Environmentalists Need Each Other, is available from Washington State University Press. The book describes realistic steps toward a future that includes both prosperous, sustainable agriculture and a flourishing, healthy environment.
That farmers and environmentalists need each other may seem surprising given that they fight over nearly every major environmental issue we face. But if they would cooperate they could actually assure prosperity for agriculture and could dramatically improve our nation’s environment. Instead, their political deadlock is threatening the nation’s food and stalling progress on the environment.
This book shows how they can end that fight and why doing so would greatly benefit both them and the rest of us.
Buy it: Amazon.com | Bookshop.org | Washington State University Press
Other Research & Writings
Don provides writings and research on agriculture, salmon, natural resources, and the environment and on the political dimension in which they survive or fail. These materials are made available here as a resource for those seeking practical ways to preserve the environment while conducting economically viable natural resource enterprises. Explore more research & writings.
Don also has a YouTube channel in which he provides materials on AIs and humans, construction of the 47′ commercial salmon troller “F/V Nightwinges,” construction of the all-electric pleasure vessel, Electric Frog, and various other projects. That YouTube channel is linked HERE.